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Archive for the ‘Quotes from the month’ Category

The elephant and the bar-stool: Quotes from August

Posted in Quotes from the month, tagged , , , , , , on 29 August, 2010 | 4 Comments »

In August, I read the headline I’d been waiting for all my life: Motorcyclist fined for wearing BBQ In a nearby suburb on a late August day, Michael Wiles, a 29-year-old man drove merrily down the freeway on his motorcycle wearing a BBQ.  A report on Yahoo!7 news said that Wiles had found a discarded [...]

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An exceedingly interesting man: Quotes from July

Posted in Literature, On writing, Quotes from the month, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 14 August, 2010 | 8 Comments »

In July, my father died and I discovered how much words matter and how little.  They were inadequate to so much of what was required.  To comfort my father and give him heart as he contemplated what was ahead; to give my mother courage, and my siblings, companionship; and to honour him at his funeral. [...]

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Fairytales for the 21st century: Quotes from June

Posted in Literature, Quotes from the month, tagged , , , , , on 12 July, 2010 | 3 Comments »

In June, I read two fairytales for the men and women of the early 21st century: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire, the first two instalments of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. Larsson, following only a marginally more sophisticated “write-by-numbers” syllabus than the one Dan Brown used, gives us [...]

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Something beaconed from the eye: Quotes from May

Posted in Quotes from the month, tagged , , , , , on 6 June, 2010 | 4 Comments »

In May I read Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, one of the classics you feel you know better for never having read. It’s slighter and rougher than I expected.  The star of the story turns out to be, not Dr Harry Jekyll and his alter ego, who are [...]

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Too beautiful: Quotes from April

Posted in Quotes from the month, tagged , , , , , , on 3 May, 2010 | 13 Comments »

In April, have been reading The Blue Flower by the page, and Remembrance of Things Past by the line.  Proust is, I fear, too beautiful for me.  After a few paragraphs I want a bit of  Bukowski, say, and his drinking and vomiting. In the meantime, the Flower is odd.  Written by Penelope Fitzgerald, it’s [...]

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The lamb roared: Quotes from March

Posted in On writing, Quotes from the month, tagged , , , , , , , on 3 April, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Read a luscious edition of the The Guardian Weekly in March.  Didn’t know where to look first, so bursting was it with stimulation and that beautiful assured insouciance I don’t find elsewhere. The week after wasn’t a patch which just goes to show it’s a fine chemistry of reader, writer and possibly, weather. Nancy Banks-Smith, [...]

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“A nasty little subject”: Quotes from February

Posted in How to live, Literature, Philosophy and culture, Quotes from the month, tagged , , , , , , on 7 March, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Somewhere in The Western Canon, Harold Bloom, the Yale English professor who in the 90s made the decision – probably shrewder than it was brave – to oppose postmodernism and defend the castle instead, says that Shakespeare “invented” the modern human. Moreover, Shakespeare invented the modern human by virtue of one neat trick: the device [...]

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“I love you, but …” Quotes from January

Posted in Literature, Quotes from the month, tagged , , , , , , , , on 3 February, 2010 | 8 Comments »

Dear Marukami san, I love you, but … WHAT HAPPENED WITH KAFKA ON THE SHORE? True, Mr Nakata has an excellent character, and his first conversation with Otsuka, the “elderly black tomcat,”  is very enjoyable.  And the episode with the school teacher having an erotic dream of her husband and it all getting mixed up in her [...]

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A dash of nightgown: Quotes from December

Posted in Great blogs, Philosophy and culture, Quotes from the month, tagged , , , , on 30 December, 2009 | 6 Comments »

Anyone who reads this blog will know by now that I like a good contrast. Serious … silly … serious … silly … is how my mind works. Previously, I might have been described as having catholic tastes if only the word hadn’t died, if not by disuse then surely by association. If I’d been born in the [...]

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Of the meat: Quotes from November

Posted in Literature, Philosophy and culture, Quotes from the month, tagged , , , , , , , on 6 December, 2009 | 4 Comments »

In November,  I read The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper. I know now why it’s won every literary prize Australia can award. It’s the true story of the death in police custody of the Aboriginal man, Cameron Doomadgee, on Palm Island, a God-forsaken tropical flyspeck off the coast of Australia that had previously served as an [...]

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