Carole Angier
Not Even the Horse Was Normal
WHAT SHOULD BIOGRAPHY do? Should it widen our sympathies, like all great literature, or may it also confirm our old ideas? I had hoped Peter Parker's new biography would do the first, but instead it has done the second. I regret this, and, if I'm not alone, Parker may regret it even more. But what matters is truth, or (all that is in our power) honesty and fairness. And this biography is scrupulously honest and fair.
True, I'm a specially hard nut to crack. I'm a woman, and Isherwood hated women, a heterosexual and he hated heterosexuals, a Jew and (excepting his friends, in the usual way) he hated Jews. I'm also a European, while he dumped Europe in favour of
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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