The next day, he reached Santander in a driving rain. He deciden to write amusing letters to all of his friends, perhaps even try his hand at a travel sketch. That required a typewriter. The conserje at his hotel directed him to a store that rented typewriters. He went there and found a clerk who […]
Si me gusta una canción (o me desagrada una canción), tengo que explicarme a mí mismo por qué existe esa sensación. Si tengo que escribir sobre dicha canción en un foro público, tengo que explicárselo a otras personas. Pero mi explicación nunca es completamente fiel a menos que diga simple y llanamente “me gusta esto […]
El Star Wars crepuscular se construye con el doble juego entre la historia social y la conceptual. Pero esta última es en realidad una doble historia: la de las propias películas y la de los horizontes de expectativas que nosotros construimos sobre el concepto “Jedi” a partir de todo el paratexto: el merchandising, las bromas […]
I have never found anywhere, in the domain of art, that you don’t have to walk to. (There is quite an array of jets, buses, and hacks which you can ride to Success; but that is a different destination.) It is a pretty wild country. There are, of course, roads. Great artists make the roads; […]
‘Fergus, you’re a Tory. When Tories say freedom they mean money; the freedom to send your child to a private school means the money to send your child to a private school. The freedom to invest in South Africa means the money to invest there so you can make even more. And don’t tell me […]
Right now our society is full of lost, angry people looking for someone to blame. Right now, our culture is captured by swivel-eyed demagogues only too happy to take that blame and direct it for their own political ends. Racists, xenophobes, homophobes, misogynists, religious extremists and right-wing fanatics, all offering their own lyrics to the […]
I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen. I believe in my own obsessions, in the beauty of the car crash, in the […]
A writer can’t help being political, even if she simply goes along with the uninterrogated cultural assumptions of her day. Obviously I think it’s better to be consciously aware of the political origin of your ingrained attitudes; but I also think this core material should be handled with some restraint by the text. Your arguments […]
Como escribe Jan Nederveen Pieterse, del Instituto de Estudios Sociales de la Haya: “¿Cómo nos reconciliamos con el hecho de que haya chicas marroquíes que practican boxeo tailandés en Ámsterdam, que haya rap asiático en Londres, bagels irlandeses, tacos chinos, o indios que salen de carnaval en Estados Unidos…? Las experiencias culturales, pasadas o presentes, no […]
Quiero decir, las quinientas personas o mil o cuantas haya en una sala, ¿cómo se enfrentan a una película como esa? Hay demasiado sentido común flotando en la sala, y para enfrentarse a una película como esa hay que dejar a un lado el sentido común, algo más fácil de hacer cuando estás a solas. […]