Splinters

Here’s an amusing diversion: “I Write Like” a ‘statistical analysis tool’ which you can drop any example of your, or someone else’s writing into, and it will then tell you which classic author your prose most resembles. Fortnights of fun. Sticking some of my old stuff from Spike into it there is one “James Joyce”, one “George [...]

Many of the greatest ideas are the simplest, those you can’t believe no-one has come up with before, and that definitely applies to the fascinating website Letters of Note. The site simply reproduces the private and personal letters (in most cases showing the paper original)  of a wildly diverse array of famous individuals, from Kafka to Hitler, [...]

As I have noted before, I am not usually a fan of our near namesakes smuggoes at the pretendy-Marxist, ultra-libertarian Spiked. Every once in while they do come up with the goods though, as with this review of Román Gubern and Paul Hammond’s new biography of Bunuel. The book sounds a fascinating view of a fascinating [...]

Its impossible to capture the disturbing beauty of David Lynch’s films in words, but Nicolas Lezard’s article in The Guardian has a decent go. As Nicholas says  ”If ever there was a director who put dreams on to the screen….. without trying to impose a coherent, readily graspable narrative order on them, it is David [...]

“Dickens is good” shocker. He is though you know. And it’s his birthday, you may have noticed. I was never interested in Dickens at all during my teens, and school did nothing to counter this. I only bothered to properly explore him after reading George Orwell’s magnificent essay on him, which made the world Dickens had created [...]

It’s great to see there is now an award for the Best Hatchet Job of the Year when it comes to book reviewing. Reading a good literary demolition job is often hugely enjoyable experience, even if it’s just catty score settling (ie. Julie Burchill’s amusing assault on Nick Kent’s NME memoir). Just occasionally though, it can reach a [...]

Here they go, as they went. The Rights of Man – Thomas Paine The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler Selected English Essays – Jonathan Swift, William Hazlitt, Thomas de Quincey, Thomas Carlyle and others Nazi Literature in the Americas – Roberto Bolano The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard Black Mass – John Gray Steppenwolf – [...]

This week’s Private Eye  Michel Houellebecq and Bernard-Henri Levy conversing on the subject of Christmas in the style of their recent book of exchanges. Or rather, Craig Brown’s imagining of this. Private Eye doesn’t do much online, so here is “Houellebecq” on Santa transcribed by dilligent me: “Christmas, my dear Bernard-Henri, is, as we know, loathsome, [...]

It’s a few years old now but this look at the supposed Ten Least Successful Holiday Specials of all Time on the Whatever website is very funny indeed.  Ayn Rand’s Christmas is particularly effective. “In this hour-long radio drama, Santa struggles with the increasing demands of providing gifts for millions of spoiled, ungrateful brats across the world, [...]

I see Frank Miller has aired his erudite views on the Occupy protestors, namely that they are “louts, thieves, rapists”, and,  in a quieter moment, as  “pond scum”. I would be interested to see the statistics  on how many acts of sexual violence have been perpetrated in the name of bringing regulation to a rogue banking [...]

With apologies for the obvious post title : RIP to Shelagh Delaney. A true artistic original, the first to get a female working-class perspective onto the British stage,  A Taste of Honey remains a beautiful work. Inspiring Morrissey was a bit of a bonus too.  More here. Postscript: Pointed piece by Belinda Webb in The Guardian bemoaning the lack of, yet need for, an heir to [...]

It’s new Fall album time - no 29: Ersatz GB.  Here’s my review – it’s good. Me and other Fall fans will like it, most people won’t. A marginally less flippant observation: I’d say the last few albums (post 2007)  are less collections of songs; more skewed symphonies. Of these, last year’s  Our Future, Your Clutter is still the most outstanding to me, but give [...]

A few years back I read the very fine  Children of Albion Rovers, a compendium of writing by young Scottish authors, compiled by Rebel Inc’s Kevin Williamson in 1996, and featuring earlier work by a certain  up-and- coming Irvine Welsh. One of the stories was by Paul Reekie. “Submission” was an enjoyably scrappy and digressive [...]

The Guardian’s National Book Swap seemed like a lovely idea. The wet-lib rag urged its readers to leave much used and much loved books in random public places with a note urging  a stranger to pick them up so that they might find the same inspiration enjoyment . They in turn could leave their own favoured tome in [...]

Half Man Half Biscuit are back, with a new album – 90 Bisodol (Crimond).  It’s great of course – that much should be obvious. Less expected is that a brilliant article has been written giving this marvelous band the respect they so completely deserve. All fans should read Taylor Parkes’s fabulous piece in the Quietus.   My own tribute to the [...]