by Barry Walsh | Sep 9, 2010 | Blog Archive
I read The Great Gatsby again last summer; something I do every year. It’s a holiday event that never disappoints. While Gatsby may not be the best novel ever written, I think it’s the best short one. And, proportionally, it contains more beautiful...
by Barry Walsh | Aug 22, 2010 | Blog Archive
Now and again you come across a piece of writing that explains something you’ve felt for a long time but lacked the necessary brain power to write down concisely. In Shop Talk, Philip Roth interviews other (mainly Jewish) authors. One is Aharon Appelfeld...
by Barry Walsh | May 31, 2010 | Blog Archive
Until recently, my small lawn was a beautiful moss green. However, to be a proper lawn, it really needed to feature grass. So I decided to do a proper renovation job and dig it over. A couple of hours later, sore and exhausted, I retreated indoors for a severe...
by Barry Walsh | Apr 14, 2010 | Blog Archive
I’m still reading and re-reading Clive James’s Cultural Amnesia. It’s a scintillating A-Z of his own takes on characters who, for good or ill, have helped to shape the world we live in. I now know something about many people I knew only by name, or not at all –...
by Barry Walsh | Feb 11, 2010 | Blog Archive
These two smilers haunt me. I’m reading Michelle de Kretser’s The Lost Dog. Some fine, fine writing by yet another author for whom Henry James is a key reference. And I remain an aspiring writer who hasn’t read a word of his or, even more shamefully,...
by Barry Walsh | Nov 21, 2009 | Blog Archive
A London youth club I’m involved with tries to instil sportsmanship and fair play in every boy who plays for one its nine football teams. How much harder this task becomes when the exhortations of mere mortals have to compete with an example set by one of the...
