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rob.hanks
Interests: music, film, radio, books, bicycles, zoos
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Yes! I had forgotten all about that. Do I take it that 2066 did not work for you?
On the mat: Madagascar
One of those rare, very special days when all the magazines this blog subscribes to - LRB, NYRB, TLS and New Yorker - tumble on to the mat at once. The TLS letters page leads with this from Gwyn Campbell of McGill University, Montreal: Sir, – Readers of the TLS unfamiliar with the field of his...
Yes. Yes, that is true.
Zoo news: Bear special
On Saturday afternoon in Bern, a 25-year-old man climbed into the new Bear Park - an extension of the old bear pit - and was attacked by one of the two resident European brown bears, Finn. Police shot Finn in the chest, driving him back into his enclosure. The man was bitten about the head, bu...
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Mar 15, 2010
Oh, trust me, Ive already checked ABE out.
Not a Penguin
Other brands of nicely designed old paperbacks are available: And while this blog's policy remains resolutely pro-Penguin, a change is as good as &c. Published by Doubleday Anchor, 1956. Noah Greenberg was founder and director of New York Pro Musica Antiqua, with whom Auden collaborated seve...
A follow-up to that: St. Clair McKelway was the subject of a long piece by Roger Angell in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago (issue dated 15 February) - he was the New Yorkers managing editor in the Thirties, joined up during the war and was a senior PR officer for the air force. The subject of Angells article was a celebrated piece McKelway wrote about bombing raids on Japan, A Reporter with the B-29s. In the 1950s he confessed that the piece had been written during a comprehensive nervous breakdown: this was in another piece, entitled A reporter at wits end, which is also the title of a new anthology of his New Yorker writing. The book on Kate Beatons page, True Tales of Crime and Rascality, was a an earlier collection.
Irritatingly, the Angell piece laying all this out is behind a subscription wall.
Not a Penguin
Other brands of nicely designed old paperbacks are available: And while this blog's policy remains resolutely pro-Penguin, a change is as good as &c. Published by Doubleday Anchor, 1956. Noah Greenberg was founder and director of New York Pro Musica Antiqua, with whom Auden collaborated seve...
I didnt know Kate Beaton, so thank you for that. I think the Ernest Jones gag works best; but the St. Clair McKelway cover I must have.
Not a Penguin
Other brands of nicely designed old paperbacks are available: And while this blog's policy remains resolutely pro-Penguin, a change is as good as &c. Published by Doubleday Anchor, 1956. Noah Greenberg was founder and director of New York Pro Musica Antiqua, with whom Auden collaborated seve...
Jonathan, I think I... Id like to bear your children. Probably not practical, though.
Anyway, thank you for that extremely kind comment. Im pretty sure there will be an iPlayer option - it doesnt always happen straight afterwards - but Ill check.
Enjoy the Nags Head.
Casting modesty aside...
...or possibly caution, I ought to point out that I'm presenting tonight's Archive on 4 on BBC Radio 4, on the theme of pubs and literature, produced by the gifted and fragrant Tim Dee. You should listen, if only to hear W. B. Yeats, little leprechaun of a man that he is (after that you can swit...
What Im now going to have to do is dig out the Drabble and comb through the two editions to see whats changed. I can see my productive capacity shrinking quite violently.
Off the shelf: The Oxford Companion to English Literature
More to the point, out of the stocking. Santa was pretty good about consulting my Amazon wishlist this year - not so great for our local independent bookshop but avoids that awkward moment when I tear off the wrapping, realise it's something I've already got, and fail to compose my face into a...
Thanks so much for taking the trouble to comment, Dinah, and for solving the paperback mystery. Antic Hay - doh! Huxley covers of the Fifties are interesting, because he was given his own typeface, Corvinus - the first time Penguin had used any face but Gill for fiction.
As for the SF: I sort of assumed that Andy Sawyers enthusiasm must explain a lot, but didnt say that in the original post in case it could be construed as some kind of attack on him. And what I wrote wasnt meant, either, to come across as a carp about the stuff youd missed out - thats a cheap way of scoring points off any reference book. As you may have gathered, Ive got one foot in the SF camp myself, so Im not unsympathetic, and I take your point about redressing the balance.
I think what I was groping towards was this thought: in certain contexts, and editing a major reference work like the OCEL is one, different kinds of literature become in effect competing interest groups; and the specialist associate editors are acting not only as arbiters, but as advocates for their particular genres, forms whatever. So one of the duties of an editor is to balance the claims of various lobbies. I hadnt realised this before.
Anyway, things to like - well, I like big chunky reference books about books, so youre quids in. And I like the entry on deconstruction, with its reference to Derridas alarmingly simplified account of the history of Western philosophy. I found the definition of postmodernism useful, too. Im sure Ill come across lots of others; but it is a strange process, having owned a Drabble since I was a student, and now weaning myself off it.
Off the shelf: The Oxford Companion to English Literature
More to the point, out of the stocking. Santa was pretty good about consulting my Amazon wishlist this year - not so great for our local independent bookshop but avoids that awkward moment when I tear off the wrapping, realise it's something I've already got, and fail to compose my face into a...
I thought of going through catalogues of old Penguins to work out what it could be, but thought that might look obsessive and weird. Youve restored my faith.
I did wonder if the T was deceptive, and it was Angel Pavement; but going by Baines, that would have had an illustration on the front.
Off the shelf: The Oxford Companion to English Literature
More to the point, out of the stocking. Santa was pretty good about consulting my Amazon wishlist this year - not so great for our local independent bookshop but avoids that awkward moment when I tear off the wrapping, realise it's something I've already got, and fail to compose my face into a...
Very glad to have been of service. Come again soon.
Robert
Penguin: Blind, blind
A double feature, to make up for having missed a few weeks: First Penguin edition, 1965, cover design by Leif Anisdahl. 1963 reprint, cover design by Romek Marber. "It is some novels, after all, that may bring us really close to the quality of working-class life ... the impression of being...
Youre just muddying the waters still further, George.
Shocked and ashamed
I'm both those things, realising that it's almost a month since I've posted. My excuse is that I have been busy trying to be a proper writer - in particular, I have written and recorded two radio programmes with Tim Dee, one of which went out last Friday, a Radio 3 concert interval talk entitled...
That is worth knowing.
Tease by demons
A doubly Hitchcockian moment from Denmark, via William Gibson's Twitter feed (under the nom de tweet GreatDismal) and a Google translation: A gracious woman escaped from a collision with a seagull, the other day when she was hit in the head while she sat in the Tivoli amusement new Vertigo. ...
Your boggle is our delight.
But its still pretty depressing.
Demented
The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, which struck on All Saints' Day, killing tens of thousands and destroying many churches, caused many Christians to question the assumption that God is just and/or benevolent (we can discuss another time why they hadn't spotted before then any inequity in the ...
Absolutely, Im up for that. Owen, I dont think Ive seen doing American, but Hoskins, Winstone - astonishing they still get work (Winstone does it all over again in The Departed, though after Damon and DiCaprios Bawston whines its actually a relief). Having said that, Ive seen Hoskins accent in Roger Rabbit touted as a good one, even by Americans; and I thought Michael Caine was rubbish in Cider House Rules, too, but he got an Oscar, so what do I know?
Mur-ree Puppens
Over at the New Republic, Christopher Orr presents his personal Oscars. He makes some interesting choices - Colin Firth as Best Actor for A Single Man, not released in the UK yet - and some funny ones: Worst Movie (Idiotic Remakes of Minor Classics Category) goes to The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3....
Flattered to receive such praise from such a highly regarded brand of sex enhancer.
Zoo news: Do not feed the animals
1) This is Pedro, Berlin Zoo's alpha-male chimpanzee, who on Monday 8 June asserted his dominance by biting off the forefinger of the zoo's director, Bernhard Blaszkiewitz, while being fed walnuts through the bars of his cage. Surgeons reattached the finger, but it subsequently became infect...
Im glad somebody is taking this seriously.
Pay attention: this is the most important information you will ever hear
via Chris Sims, the "Critical Reception" section of the Wikipedia entry on the Pokemon character Bulbasaur: CNN reporter Dennis Michael described Bulbasaur as one of the "lead critters" of the games and "perhaps the Carmen Miranda of Pokémon figures." Joyce Millman's impression of a Bulbasaur wa...
Good god, I hadn't registered any of that was Roberts - and the tip of the parody iceberg, according to his website: Doctor Whom. Star Warped. The Sellamillion. No, stop it, you're killing me.
Hugo prat?
Adam Roberts, SF critic and author, has stirred up a storm in a multidimensional quasi-intelligent teacup by telling SF fans they have terrible taste - specifically, they chose lousy shortlists for this year's Hugo Awards. (For my non-SF readers: the Hugos are the most prestigious awards in SF,...
And did you see the Guardian's letters column on the subject? Carole Craig in Dublin said Amis is "avowedly, vocally anti-Islamic" and asked "If someone were equally antisemitic, would you have them write on Israel?" The answer may not be as clear-cut as she thinks.
A Religiously-Inspired Alternative to Secular Humanism
Well there you go. Martin Amis writes a piece in the Guardian about Iran, which pretty much echoes the standard line, that we may just be seeing the beginning of the end of the Khomeinist revolution. He's obviously done his homework, and while I wouldn't want to defend all of his arguments, it's...
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