Japanese Inro by Julia Hutt
Inro were small sectioned lacquerware boxes, generally a little smaller than a cigarette packet, which wealthy Japanese wore dangling from their sash-belts from the 17th Century until around a hundred years ago, when Weste[…]

When Santas Clash!
“Some of them are believed to have overindulged in alcohol…”[…]

Mankind: Have A Nice Day by Mick Foley
I suppose going from a novel by a Nobel winner (reviewed below) to the autobiography of an ex-WWE wrestler is probably about as big a drop in literary respectability as one could contrive. Perhaps predictably, I[…]

Stingray: the comic
I came across a Stingray graphic novel (haha not really, it’s a squarebound collection of old strips – but I thought I’d abuse the term the way it so often is these days) in a charity shop today. There are all so[…]

The Silent Cry by Kenzaburo Oe
This was the first book I’ve read by this Japanese Nobel Laureate. It’s certainly impressive, but I’m not sure that he’ll ever become a real favourite of mine. I can see why Henry Miller compares[…]

Sometimes completely unexpected connections leap out and smack you in the face. Not too long back I wrote a little on Proven By Science about certain kinds of brain damage that cause aphasias related to ways of seeing. Last night I read the trade pap[…]

Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton
I’d never been to a jazz gig in my life. I’d never listened to much free jazz, or got into it at all. My friend Andrew wanted to go to this gig, part of the London Jazz Festival at the Royal Festival Hall,[…]

Platform by Michel Houellebecq
He seems to have become a fashionable writer, but I hadn’t read him before this. I didn’t like it. He’s a clever man, and he expresses his ideas with clarity and force – but he does so by creatin[…]

Camille Claudel
I seem to be engaged in a series of appreciations of undervalued artists from a century or so back here (see Bartholdi and af Klint pieces below). I’ll stop after this one, but I do want to mention someone who I think was a grea[…]

That guitarist is defensively naive…
Have you ever wondered why commentary on African football is like criticism of soul music? Probably not, but if you want to find out, go to Everything They Say About Soul Is Wrong. It’s mostly about mu[…]