Michael Arditti
Man On Wire
Walking a tightrope is a telling, if familiar, metaphor for the precariousness of contemporary life. Nowhere is this more so than in New York, the epitome of urban culture, a city of extraordinary wealth and extreme alienation where boatloads of immigrants from across the globe meet coachloads of itinerants from across America.
Colum McCann’s thrilling new novel features tightrope walking as both a metaphor and an actual event. In the first instance, it becomes a powerful image of both the ambition and the brutality of life in twentieth-century
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'The trouble seems to be that we are not asked to read this author, reading being a thing of the past. We are asked to decode him.'
From the archive, Derek Mahon peruses the early short fiction of Thomas Pynchon.
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'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
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Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553