Tuesday, December 5th, 2006
My last entry being just over more than two weeks ago, my apologies for the “dead air”. I had a splendid trip to the U.S., and no chance to comment on items post the Collected Works Reading and Signing. But now, Boswestblog is back - I’ll be posting as normal as soon as I can shake off the (absolutely crushing) jet lag.
Meanwhile, I’ve noticed that the interface with Flickr isn’t working at the moment. This is likely a connectivity glitch, not anything serious, and the pics should be back up for viewing soon.
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Friday, December 8th, 2006
What is “my near west” - ? It is the transatlantic path that connects London, UK, where I usually first re-enter the “west” when travelling, and Denver, Colorado, USA, where I most often take my leave of it. Here is a series of pics from a recent sojourn there.
All images were taken with a Canon Powershot A80, and put through the open-source app. digiKam’s color balancing (some would say “colorizing”) wringer. They are displayed in sequential order: the first photo is the oldest, the last the latest. Go to Flickr for the captions; this is part one of four.
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Monday, December 11th, 2006
by James Robertson
Penguin/Hamish Hamilton
reviewed by Ben Oswest
An edited version of this review originally appeared in the 12 November 2006 Sunday Independent. Here’s the link for subscribers:
Strangely, I can’t find the original text of the review, before it was whittled down for newsprint - but what follows is the piece post the initial bout of whittling, which makes is slightly different from what appeared in the Independent (though still much truncated):
And on the third day he rose again. Gideon Mack, that is: the Scottish minister who set the North Sea hamlet of Monimaskit briefly aflame with scandal when, having fallen into the Keldo Water and been presumed irretrievably drowned for half a week, he miraculously reappeared, claiming it was the Devil himself that had saved him. Further, Auld Nick was now his friend. This is what passes for the premise of James Robertson’s new but rather worn novel, at least, and what’s interesting about it is that it’s laid out in full in the prologue – a sure clue that something’s up.
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Tuesday, December 12th, 2006
by Njabulo Ndebele
Picador Africa
reviewed by Ben Oswest
I fear that because of a silly error on my part, a legion South Africans will now think less of Ernest Hemingway. How, precisely, have I impugned Papa Doc’s reputation? By suggesting in print - to the heart-clutching horror of a few people at the Sunday Times - that he singled out Tom Sawyer
as the father of American literature. Any fool can tell you it was Huck Finn. How on Earth could anyone choose Tom Sawyer over Huck Finn - ? Answer: no one could, would, or, in fact, did. I actually knew this - spotted the error myself, in fact, after the fact - but for some reason I didn’t write it.
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Monday, December 18th, 2006
An edited version of the novelist Sheila Roberts’s review of The New Suffolk Hymnbook appeared in The Weekender on Saturday. Here’s the link:
And here’s the review in full:
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Friday, December 22nd, 2006
The last group in this series - see Flickr for captions.
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Sunday, December 24th, 2006
Today’s Sunday Independent features a survey of a few dozen writers’ “books of the year” - mine among them. Here are the links for subscribers:
Only three of the titles I submitted actually made it into print - here’s the full list:
New books (all South African)
Mandela’s Ego by Lewis Nkosi (Fiction, Umuzi). Wicked satire that rivals Nkosi’s first novel, Mating Birds, as a surgical dismemberment of cherished beliefs - pure jazz to read. (Click title for review in Boswestblog.)
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Friday, December 29th, 2006
By the time the Ford Administration (discontinued) reached the small town in the Colorado Rockies where I grew up - not Vail, reportedly the President’s favorite resort in the state, but two hours’ drive north-northwest of it - its security detail had shrunk to two, and there were barely enough cabinet men, lackeys and hangers-on in the entourage to complete a foursome.
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