Greeks and Romans thought the world looked like a fried egg. There was land in the middle, wholly surrounded by Ocean, with a sea (appropriately called the Mediterranean) bisecting the land. Even in the early Middle Ages, fishermen in what is now Normandy are said to have heard at dead of night the boats putting … Read more
I have always warmed to authors who thank their spouses for preparing their index. Such marital harmony, such mutual society, help and comfort. You can imagine their kitchen: she sitting at the table rummaging through proofs and index cards, he standing at the stove turning Seville oranges into coarse-cut marmalade. It is surely gracious also … Read more
The saints of February are a rum lot. The larger their reputation, the less can be said for certain about their lives and activities—and vice versa. The blameless virgin Saint Scholastica, twin sister of Saint Benedict, is relatively well documented—for someone who lived fifteen hundred years ago. But she is remembered only for the name … Read more
Who now reads Charles Morgan? Some years ago there was a revival of his novel The Gunroom, which proved to anyone who was interested that the middle one of Churchill’s three Traditions of the Royal Navy (Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash) was a living reality for young officers of the Edwardian Era. Morgan’s masterpiece is … Read more
I like starting novels in the middle. By skipping all those establishing shots, which exclude as much as they reveal, you’re able to catch the author and the characters off their guard. Also, once you have finished, you can start again at the beginning and have the paradoxical pleasure of reading the book for the … Read more
Of all the places I have ever lived, Minneapolis is the most confusing. One might have thought it would be otherwise. It was meant to be laid out, after all, on a Jeffersonian grid. Yet one cycles down the street, blithely confident that the 3800 block of Sheridan Avenue South will lead ineluctably into the … Read more
One would have thought it was impossible to pay too much for food. Life, after all, is not the same without it. Yet all over the developed world, farmers are hard up. The English newspapers made hay some weeks ago with a story about farmers’ wives in the Hardy Country, one of the most picture-postcard … Read more
I hope you are enjoying the new Harry Potter. Such a wealth of invention. And so witty. No profound psychological penetration, I suppose, but who ever expected that in a school story or a murder mystery? J.K. Rowling may not be Jane Austen, but then neither is Dorothy Sayers (who made the error of falling … Read more
Though it is nearly 20 years ago now, some of us are old enough to remember the Official Preppy Handbook. It told girls called Muffy how to adjust their pearls, push pennies into their penny loafers and pursue men in tartan trousers (which they called plaid pants). The other day I came across the British … Read more
Imperialists come in all shapes and sizes. Some claim their god gave them the right to take away other people’s land and market the produce of their orange groves. Others never visit the places or people whose lives they dominate through the sale of brown sticky drinks and their cinematic equivalent. And then there are … Read more