Obviously I’m thrilled to be included in the Times’ (UK) list of “Forty bloggers who really count.” As is my nature, I also feel anxious and unworthy, but at a certain point (which came for me a long time ago) it is tacky and seems disingenuous to say so. Feel free to call me on that. This month marks eight . . .
Even some scholars read Mark Twain’s Fenimore Cooper diatribe literally, but the offenses listed in the essay, as in much of the best satire, are greatly exaggerated.
From now on, when people inquire how I feel about working a day job, I think I’ll defer to Philip Larkin. Asked about his life as a University of Hull librarian, the poet replied: Taking it all in all, work and I get on fairly well, I think. There are just these occasions when one would like to prove it . . .
Muriel Spark’s 1992 autobiography has been characterized as purse-lipped, sterile, and withholding, a manipulative account designed to settle scores and divert attention from anything unflattering. Curriculum Vitae may be more factual than confessional, but judged on its own terms rather than by the standards of the contemporary tell-all, the book is a charming, idiosyncratic, and closely observed personal history, one . . .