Parables of Shame
Franz Kafka was a poet of shame and guilt. So writes Saul Friedlander in his Franz Kafka:…
Dear Readers
Dear Readers Even though the archive is burning, I have nonetheless done some renovations of my…
Simple steps
Here is a poem I wrote some years ago on a day when sickness is tugging…
Going sane writing
Adam Phillips says somewhere, perhaps in one of his intriguing essays, perhaps in an interview with the…
List: my lacunae in Bloom’s Western Canon
I admire Harold Bloom and his scorn for the New Schools of Resentment. I recognise my…
Gathering flowers for the mind
This morning I pulled down from my bookshelf a cardboard box that contains a hundred or…
The start of a series of lists
Once a week on a Tuesday I will post a list, with Borges as more of…
Is nothing sacred?
One of the surprises of my mid-life has been the admission of a longing for the sacred….
Madness & History
I am reading Andrew Scull’s Madness in Civilization: a cultural history of insanity from the Bible…
On suicide
Over the last month or two I have been writing a government policy statement on suicide….