RIP John le Carré - brilliant and underrated to the last
I met him when I was eleven or twelve, because one of his sons was in my class. He arrived in a Rolls Royce, talked affably in the...
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Richard Farr
- Dec 9, 2020
Time's wingèd chariot
I was amused and a little disturbed recently to stumble upon both a couple of life expectancy calculators (here's one) and a page on the...
Richard Farr
- Jul 16, 2020
Spartan talk
Above: Edgar Degas and Jacques Louis David with competing erotic visions of the Spartans. Or Lacedaemonians. Rooting about in Thucydides,...
Richard Farr
- Mar 27, 2020
The uselessness of Eric Ambler
In the years leading up to the Second World War, Eric Ambler wrote some of the most influential thrillers ever published - more or less...
Richard Farr
- Feb 18, 2020
Kafka's progress
Today's quote of the day from The Browser - which I recommend to everyone - struck a cord for me. It's a commonplace in our culture to...
Richard Farr
- Nov 25, 2019
Italo Calvino on how to be an efficient writer
“Every morning I tell myself, Today has to be productive—and then something happens that prevents me from writing. Today . . . what is...
Richard Farr
- Nov 22, 2019
Happy birthday George Eliot!
One of the most luminous, most humane intelligences in history was born two hundred years ago today: But the effect of her being on those...
Richard Farr
- Nov 20, 2019
Al-chemie
Reading all the depressing news about plastic, which has now found its way to the bottom of the Marianas Trench – I’m reminded again of a...
Richard Farr
- Nov 4, 2019
Macboris: a fragment from a lost play about power and nihilism
Discovered recently among the manuscripts of that great English dramatist Willie A. Peakshamers: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...
Richard Farr
- Jul 27, 2019
Preston Singletary at the Tacoma Glass Museum
I don’t think of myself as a glass fan, and little else here (or at Chihulymania in Seattle) does anything for me, aesthetically. But...
Richard Farr
- May 1, 2019
RIP Les Murray 1938-2019
The brilliant old curmudgeon, Australia’s great Bard of Bunyah, is dead. I found his political, social and religious outlook by turns...
Richard Farr
- Feb 28, 2019
The brutal irony of brutalised Brutalists
In this article in the Guardian on the subject of famous “Brutalist” buildings under threat from demolition, I note with interest and...
Richard Farr
- Jan 11, 2019
Well anyway, all ends well
The characters’ motivations make so little sense that theories abound about missing or garbled text. And some of its faults would be easy...
Richard Farr
- Dec 18, 2018
Ralph and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra in the Olivier at the National Theatre; a bracingly modern techno-thriller with executive suites, machine guns, and...
Richard Farr
- May 29, 2018
Progress about ‘progress in philosophy’
Philosophers are still reading Aristotle, and still arguing about whether there is free will: ergo, philosophy is useless. It has always...
Richard Farr
- Mar 29, 2018
Books for Writers: “How Fiction Works”
I’m re-reading the critic James Wood’s excellent, readable little book of this title. Every writer should have a copy. There’s a superb...
Richard Farr
- Feb 5, 2018
A taste of Los Angeles
Josef Beuys, Roy Lichtenstein, Jeff Koons, and Keith Haring at the Broad Museum. Street art in East LA. And mariachi players in Mariachi...
Richard Farr
- Jan 23, 2018
RIP Ursula Le Guin
Such brilliant titles! How can you not want to read a book called The Lathe of Heaven, or The Left Hand of Darkness? The stylistic and...
Richard Farr
- Dec 20, 2017
Wyeth at SAM
It’s all about the textures at the Seattle Art Museum’s brilliant 100th anniversary retrospective on Andrew Wyeth, an iconic American...
Richard Farr
- Nov 16, 2017
Great acting – and tyranny
Helping out with a high school class on dystopian lit, I came across one of the best examples of the craft I’ve seen in a long time – the...