On Fugazi
Fugazi are a band that offer a number of thrilling paradoxes. Their sound is self-controlled yet ear-burstingly expressive; taut yet fluid; aggressive yet pacific. End Hits was the first album I got...
View ArticleOn the brogue
I always remember something my father said to me when I was a boy: “What you want to do son, is get yourself a good pair of brogues.” Being a sartorially ignorant youth more interested in acquiring...
View ArticleOn The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie
John Cassavetes defined an entire approach to film-making; his work is distinctive in that he seems to have made a decision to include what most other directors would leave on the cutting-room floor....
View ArticleOn Cricket
There is nothing rational or prosaic about cricket, which like everything else, remains subject to the awkward vicissitudes of chance. The fact that a leather ball is bowled through the air, bounces...
View ArticleOn The Magic Mountain
The Magic Mountain Without doubt one of my favourite novels is Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg. Given to me as a thirtieth birthday present, it took me two difficult years to finish. But as a book, I am...
View ArticleOn Gillian Rose’s Love’s Work
Love's Work by Gillian Rose Gillian Rose’s peerless memoir, Love’s Work, which draws a sustained and compelling connection between philosophical practice on the one hand and human love relations on the...
View ArticleOn WG Sebald
W.G. Sebald WG Sebald was teaching at the University of East Anglia whilst I was studying for my undergraduate degree but I didn’t discover his writing until much later. Interestingly enough, I came to...
View ArticleSusan Howe and the haunted world
Susan Howe The singular work of Susan Howe aims its sights at the nature of historical truth. Most significantly, the extent to which history can be understood as text – and the reciprocated mediation...
View ArticleOn re-reading Moby Dick
Moby Dick by Herman Melville Melville scholar, Andrew Delbanco’s introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Moby Dick opens with an anecdote concerning a prominent literary critic, asked to reveal...
View ArticleA few thoughts on Melancholia
Kirsten Dunst in Lars von Trier's Melancholia I’ve just returned from watching Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, the opening scenes of which are some of the most visually arresting I’ve ever seen on a...
View ArticleHis new flat
In his new flat he has committed the crime he most abhors, but that he finds most easy to commit. He is an idolater. He wagers on objects, knowing that he is to lose. His idea of interior design is...
View ArticleFailure on the Fairfield Horseshoe
The narrow road called Nook Lane that leads from Ambleside to the Lower Sweden Bridge and the start of the walk known as the Fairfield Horseshoe is an incongruently unprepossessing one given what...
View ArticleIn the Swim
As it happens I am on Hampstead Heath, just to the north west of the mixed swimming pond, and it is July, and it is hot. After much procrastination I somehow found it within me to come here and throw...
View ArticleBrand values
Polly Toynbee’s criticisms of Russell Brand in today’s Guardian feel like pretty lightweight shots at a fairly easy target. The article also fails to conduct much of an analysis of the current...
View ArticleReport from Britain Needs A Pay Rise march and Occupy London
This is a different kind of walk for me. I step out onto the Holloway Road, which is something I do every day, but because I’m heading for the ‘Britain Needs A Pay Rise’ march everything appears...
View ArticleOn Sir Christopher Lee
All my early dreams were nightmares. I was one of those strange children obsessed with the horror genre, which seemed as natural and appealing as anything else that might catch the fancy of a young...
View ArticleJames Bridle and algorithmic citizenship
James Bridle’s project, Citizen Ex, explores a different way of thinking about citizenship, based not on our country of origin, but on the physical location of the websites we visit. Broadly speaking,...
View ArticleOn The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie – John Cassavetes
John Cassavetes defined an entire approach to film-making; his work is distinctive in that he seems to have made a decision to include what most other directors would leave on the cutting-room floor....
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....