Not a Bad Way to Live, a novel. Not a Bad Way to Live
Literature
Diptych
The two intertwining stories of Jan and Freda explore several dichotomies: sex and death, man and woman, right and wrong. Jan is a long-distance driver who decides to try and rescue the prostitute he has fallen in love with from her evil pimp. Freda is an American woman in London, struggling to cope with the … Continue reading Diptych
On Rereading
When I was eighteen I went to an Oxford University open day. I remember an English Literature admissions tutor giving a speech about life as a student at the University. The thing he said that has stuck with me (although I can barely remember what he looked like now, never mind his name) was that no-one … Continue reading On Rereading
On two films about writers
Last week I watched two films about writers: The End of the Tour and Listen Up, Philip. The first film is based on the real-life occurrence of a Rolling Stone journalist interviewing David Foster Wallace towards the end of his book tour for Infinite Jest. During the film I slipped into my usual gripe: 'I … Continue reading On two films about writers
Take a good long drink
I recently read Cormac McCarthy's Suttree, a charity shop find and a novel that I was not aware of before seeing it there on the shelf. I suppose it has been eclipsed rather by Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men and The Road. To my mind it is a bit of a hidden gem, … Continue reading Take a good long drink
On Swimming
Swimming is heroic. This is an opinion I have held since reading Charles Sprawson's book 'Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero', which makes the case for this view very well. Appropriately enough, the book was recommended to me by a Hungarian man I met in the pool at the Vancouver Aquatic Centre … Continue reading On Swimming
On coffee…
We come to coffee when we need to. In this respect, it is different from alcohol, which finds us whether we want it to or not. As Stanley Kowalski says of that latter intoxicant in A Streetcar Named Desire “Some people rarely touch it, but it touches them often”. Alcohol is easy, and dangerously so, … Continue reading On coffee…
