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Friday, September 03, 2021
Beers & Books CXXIII – Eduardo Galeano
Thursday, September 02, 2021
Wednesday, September 01, 2021
Sunday, August 29, 2021
Beers & Books CXXI – Stephen Fry
Making History (1992) Paperweight (1996) |
Stephen Fry * 24 August 1957
Beers & Books CXX – Julio Cortázar
The novel wins by points, the short story by knockout. |
Julio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984)
Saturday, August 28, 2021
Inexpensive Progress
Encase your
legs in nylons,
Bestride your hills with pylons
O age without a soul;
Away with gentle willows
And all the elmy billows
That through your valleys roll.
Let's say goodbye to hedges
And roads with grassy edges
And winding country lanes;
Let all things travel faster
Where motor-car is master
Till only Speed remains.
Destroy the ancient inn-signs
But strew the roads with tin signs
'Keep Left,' 'M4,' 'Keep Out!'
Command, instruction, warning,
Repetitive adorning
The rockeried roundabout;
For every raw obscenity
Must have its small 'amenity,'
Its patch of shaven green,
And hoardings look a wonder
In banks of floribunda
With floodlights in between.
Leave no old village standing
Which could provide a landing
For aeroplanes to roar,
But spare such cheap defacements
As huts with shattered casements
Unlived-in since the war.
Let no provincial High Street
Which might be your or my street
Look as it used to do,
But let the chain stores place here
Their miles of black glass facia
And traffic thunder through.
And if there is some scenery,
Some unpretentious greenery,
Surviving anywhere,
It does not need protecting
For soon we'll be erecting
A Power Station there.
When all our roads are lighted
By concrete monsters sited
Like gallows overhead,
Bathed in the yellow vomit
Each monster belches from it,
We'll know that we are dead.
John Betjeman (28 August 1906 – 19 May 1984)
Beers & Books CXVIII – Liam O'Flaherty
[left to right] The Informer, Mr Gilhooley, Two Lovely Beasts and other Stories, I went to Russia; Famine; A Tourist's Guide To Ireland (1929) |
The Sniper [Shortstory I read in an anthology]
Liam O'Flaherty (28 August 1896 – 7 September 1984)
Friday, August 27, 2021
Tuesday, August 24, 2021
Beers & Books CXVII – Jorge Luis Borges
He measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned. |
Jorge Luis Borges (24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986)
Sunday, August 22, 2021
Beers & Books CXVI – E. Annie Proulx
The Shipping News * |
E. Annie Proulx *22August 1935