Category: Books
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Tom Wolfe on newspapers
Tom Wolfe was born on March 2, 1931, and what a gadfly he has been! One of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 70s, he blew me away when I first read him. I couldn’t recall anyone writing like him. I must admit I liked…
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Life Cycle of Common Man: Howard Nemerov
The American poet Howard Nemerov was born in New York on this day (February 29) in 1920. He died on July 5, 1991. This poem of his reminds me of Auden’s The Unknown Citizen. This is what the poet himself said about his poem: “Life Cycle of Common Man is…
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Auden: Poem on a painting
It was Auden’s birth anniversary yesterday. He was born in York on Feb 21, 1907, and he died in Vienna on Sept 29, 1973. I love many of his poems, and when I saw this picture of a painting which inspired one of his famous poems, I could not resist…
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David Copperfield, Great Expectations: Last words
Today is the 200th birth anniversary of Charles Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870). Here are two of my favourite endings from his novels. David Copperfield O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when…
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Kipling, Calcutta and The City of Dreadful Night
Today is the birthday of Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865- 18 January 1936). Born in Bombay, now called Mumbai, he died in London. Calcutta, now called Kolkata, has come to be called the “city of the dreadful night”. Even newspapers in Calcutta use that phrase as a synonym for the…
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The earliest memories of Christopher Hitchens
How will Christopher Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) be remembered? I just happened to pick up Hitch -22 and the last sentence in this passage may describe any established or aspiring writer. Describing his battle with cancer, he writes in his foreword:
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Flash floods, Paul Theroux and loving Singapore
Flash floods hit Liat Towers and other parts of Orchard Road, reported AsiaOne, but PUB, whose tasks include flood prevention, begged to differ. No floods in Orchard Road, just “ponding”: Pub, said the headline in Today. “Flooding” did occur in a section of Cambridge Road/Owen Road, according to the PUB…
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The joy of love (From Sunset Park, by Paul Auster)
I have seldom read a more joyous paean to love – and the agony, too – than this passage from the novel Sunset Park by Paul Auster, set in America after the housing crisis. Ivy League dropout Miles Heller falls in love with Pilar Sanchez, a few months under 18,…
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The Poor Voter on Election Day
Here’s a poem on elections which still holds true more than 150 years after it was written. It’s not past its sell-by date just because the elections are over and the People’s Action Party (PAP) returned to power with 60 per cent of the vote and 81 of the 87…
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