No stone left unturned: The World of Bob Dylan reviewed
In May 2019, the first World of Bob Dylan conference was held in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Why Tulsa? Because Dylan’s archives…
The odd couple: John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald
On a shard of paper, some time in the bleak mid-1930s, F. Scott Fitzgerald incorporated a favourite line from one…
The London I loved: nostalgia for a dirty old town
All cities are shapeshifters, but London is special. London is a palimpsest of places gone but not lost. Even as…
How fear and loathing of Nixon sent Hunter S. Thompson crazy
Hunter Stockton Thompson blazed across the republic of American arts and letters for too short a time. When in February…
Gatsby in Japan: Killing Commendatore, by Haruki Murakami, reviewed
Haruki Murakami’s Killing Commendatore was published in Japan in February last year. Early press releases for this English version hailed…
Good first novels without ends leave one wanting more
Novels today do not want to be done. Thank Anthony Burgess and John Fowles for this, most immediately, but alternate…
Bob Dylan is a modern-day Odysseus
‘There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.’…
Borne back ceaselessly into the past
‘I do not like the idea of the biographical book,’ F. Scott Fitzgerald told his editor Max Perkins in 1936.…
