Category: Books

Potatoes On Broadway

In May 2003 we reported about an upcoming live onstage adaptation of Thing-Fish. Today, my inbox tells me a book is being written about the production:

Rumours have it that the author of the book has completed the first bunch of chapters describing the events leading up to the first production in Liverpool 2001. Expect insights into castings, copyright procedures, mask-making and the secret potatoe-mash baking instructions, hitherto only known to very evil princes.

Stay tuned as your humble narrator *might* just possibly be involved in the making…

Arf, She Said

This is The End:

I love Junichiro Tanizaki’s The Makioka Sisters but, even allowing for cultural differences, it has to have the most peculiar final sentence in all literature: “Yukiko’s diarrhoea persisted through the twenty-sixth, and was a problem on the train to Tokyo.” That is not the way one wants to finish a book before giving a happy sigh and putting the light out.

The Administration and the Fury

If William Faulkner were writing on the Bush White House:

“Go and get him Saddam’s gun,” Condi said. “You know how he likes to hold it.”
Dick went to my desk drawer and took out Saddam’s gun. He gave it to me, and it was hot in my hands. Rummy pulled the gun away.
“Do you want him carrying a gun into the press conference?” Rummy said. “Can’t you think any better than he can?”