The Age of Richard Nixon – a study in cultural power
Tuesday, May 21st, 2013What do you think of when you think of Richard Nixon? Watergate, Vietnam, the televised debates with John .F. Kennedy? or perhaps you imagine the sweating, nervous, paranoiac portrayed by Antony Hopkins in Oliver Stone’s biopic Nixon? Images that emphasise his failures, that suggest a man unfit to be President, a villain and one thus [...]
Beautiful Noise – Helen Seymour Interview
Monday, April 29th, 2013‘Dublin,Ireland. 1985. A war is raging between The Government, RTE [the Irish state broadcaster] and the 28 illegal Pirate radio stations, who have taken control of the Nation’s airwaves and the advertising revenue that goes with it’- so reads the description on the cover of Helen Seymour’s debut novel, Beautiful Noise- a story about an [...]
From the Chalet School to Hunger Games
Wednesday, April 10th, 2013How do British schoolgirl classics like the Chalet School and Mallory Towers translate to todays bestsellers like Twighlight and The Hunger Games? Amy Ellis-Thomas compares the stock situations and rhetoric of the 1950s boarding schools to today’s equally codified young adult literature.
The Global Minotaur – Economist Yanis Varoufakis in interview
Wednesday, March 27th, 2013Have you had the suspicion that simple narratives about subprime mortgages, last minute bail-outs, and sweaty-palmed bankers fail to adequately explain what has happened to the global economy since 2008? If so, then I can heartily recommend you pick up a copy of Yanis Varoufakis‘s The Global Minotaur – America, Europe and the Future of [...]
Extracting Gold – Mary Costello interview
Friday, March 1st, 2013Mary Costello is the author of The China Factory, a collection of short stories which was published by The Stinging Fly Press. It has received much acclaim and renown for its intensity and sensitivity. Costello has an amazing capacity to reveal characters’ lives through understated encounters, be it the restraint of two strangers in The [...]
‘Hell goes round and round’: Flann O’Brien and the search for identity
Monday, February 11th, 2013Anyone who knows anything about Flann O’Brien knows he was a man of many names. Flann O’Brien was the pen name for Brian O’Nolan, who wrote journalism under the pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen. He used different spellings of his names and most of the discussion and arguments on his
Free Ride – Robert Levine on copyright, piracy, and culture
Wednesday, January 30th, 2013It’s an extremely cold (but not, we insist rainy) day in Dublin and I am sitting down in Hodges Figgis Bookshop on Dawson St. I am not alone. There are a couple of other likely and some unlikely audience candidates dotting the seats which have been set up for tonight’s main event- a talk by [...]
How I Learned to Read Again
Tuesday, January 15th, 2013I can’t remember learning to talk but I do remember learning to read. As the youngest of four, I had an urgent need to be able to read even before I started school. All around me, my family’s heads were buried in Mills and Boon, Agatha Christie, Enid Blyton, Mickey Spillane, Charles Dickens or the [...]
Melville’s Moby Dick in the Digital Age
Thursday, October 4th, 2012From their shared fascination with Moby-Dick, writer Philip Hoare and artist Angela Cockayne came together to curate, first, an installation in Plymouth, England, celebrating the book – Dominion: A Whale Symposium. They put together a book with the same title earlier this year then organised and recently launched the Moby-Dick Big Read (www.mobydickbigread.co.uk), a website [...]
Poland’s Recipe for Wealth: Work till you Drop
Wednesday, March 14th, 2012“That pension systems are unable to finance the retirement of ever increasing numbers of longer-lived pensioners nobody in aging Europe doubts,” writes Joanna Solska in Poland’s biggest selling, influential current affairs magazine Polityka1. Meanwhile Prime Minister Tusk insists that, “the aim of the pensions bill is to bring pleasure.” The proposed bill raises the retirement [...]
