Dabbler no more.
Sad to report that The Dabbler is on an indefinite hiatus . It was a great website, and not only because they printed things by me. It was an oasis of wit, insight…
Category: all art is quite useless
From “The Poetry of Thought”, George Steiner
We do speak about music. The verbal analysis of a musical score can, to a certain extent, elucidate its formal structure, its technical components and instrumentation. But where it is…
Eugene Vodolazkin, “Laurus”
I bought “Laurus” shortly after reading this TLS blog piece , and very shortly after reading some enthusiastic pieces on other blogs, wishing to read it before I could form any preconceptions…
Jorge Luis Borges, Ireland, and Historical Fiction. Alt Hist, September 9th 2012
With a less than enticing opening line (“The Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) was one of the key figures in world literature during the twentieth century.”), this piece seems…
Review of The Sword and Sorcery Anthology, edited by David G. Hartwell and Jacob Weisman, SF Site, 2012
Inadvertently, the last two posts here have provoked reflections on how I fell out of love with fantasy (and a somewhat lesser extent science fiction) – so this review continues that theme. I…
Stevenson Under the Palm Trees, Alberto Manguel. Nthposition. Early 2005.
The original link is currently broken . I re-read this book this morning. My reading speed may have increased – I read it between Kilkenny and Athy on the train. To tell…
Exhibition review: “A German Dream: Masterpieces of Romanticism from the Nationalgalerie Berlin ” – Spectator, December 2004
My one appearance in the Spectator, and my one published piece of visual art criticism. A lot of “slightly” here, and “rather.” I don’t read the Spectator much anymore; its prose style…
