Charles L.

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Asswipe party

Charles L. posted an article on - Nov 4, 2009, 4:11 pm
See these people? See how happy they are? They're down on their knees, clutching their hands together in prayer, waving their mass-produced, church-funded banners! They're ecstatic with religi...
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Strange fruit

Charles L. posted an article on - Nov 3, 2009, 7:47 am
Two items in today's newspapers here that throw an oblique light on each other and on Italian society as a whole. The first is about the decision of the Ku Klux Klan to conduct a recruitment camp...
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IMPAC

Charles L. posted an article on - Nov 2, 2009, 6:10 am
I've just discovered that Little Monsters (still available from all good booksellers) has found its way onto the long list of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It's a very long li...
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Masai root juice

Charles L. posted an article on - Nov 2, 2009, 4:43 am
If you need help with problems regarding your love life, business activities, personal enemies and sexual equipment (and, let's face it, who doesn't?), happen to live in or near Johannesburg a...
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An A-Z of Possible Worlds

Charles L. posted an article on - Nov 1, 2009, 5:13 pm
I was given the chance to read A.C. Tillyer’s extremely impressive début collection An A-Z of Possible Worlds a couple of months ago. This is what I wrote: Comment - Like

Teaser

Charles L. posted an article on - Nov 1, 2009, 9:24 am
Wondering who this is? Drop in tomorrow and you'll find out.
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Only connect

Charles L. posted an article on - Nov 1, 2009, 2:46 am
Another great Amazon recommendation: Greetings from Amazon.co.uk, As someone who has purchased or rated Howards End (Dover Thrift Editions) by E.M. Forster, you might like to know that Wicked All Da...
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Acts of Kindness

Charles L. posted an article on - Oct 31, 2009, 10:53 am
Some time ago I wrote a piece on this blog about my encounter many years ago with the poet, critic, patron and all-round literary marvel, Jonathan Williams, who had recently died. A slightly revised -...
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Property, intellectual

Charles L. posted an article on - Oct 31, 2009, 10:35 am
I just came across this extraordinary document by the son of the poet, Louis Zukofsky. What a piece of shit he appears to be, though there's something almost admirable about his determination to p...
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Awesome

Charles L. posted an article on - Oct 31, 2009, 3:42 am
Suddenly everything is clear... It's all one excellent adventure.
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Each family is unhappy in its own way

Charles L. posted an article on - Oct 18, 2009, 5:54 am
Lionel Shriver has written an interesting piece on the way her family reacted to a novel in which they felt they'd been portrayed unjustly. As someone who's currently working on a story that d...
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It must be the reference to inches

Charles L. posted an article on - Oct 10, 2009, 9:44 am
As anyone who follows this blog will know, I've received some strange Amazon recommendations in the past. You know, the ones that start: "As someone who has purchased or rated...' You can see ...
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Nice one, Pat

Charles L. posted an article on - Oct 8, 2009, 4:57 am
I haven't posted a video by Pat Condell recently, so here's his latest.
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For what it's worth

Charles L. posted an article on - Oct 4, 2009, 4:50 pm
OK, here goes. I’ve been fretting about this Polanski business ever since his arrest – like practically everyone else in the western world I hadn’t given it more than the occasional thought befo...
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Me again

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 28, 2009, 1:24 pm
Another self-promoting post, I'm afraid. Here's a two-page glimpse of the first number of the new Cambridge Literary Review, which not only contains this poem, written in 1973, but also a memo...
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Link 7

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 28, 2009, 9:02 am
East of the Web and Wordia have collaborated on a new project. It's called Link 7 and this is what East of the Web has to say about it: In partnership with Wordia, the video dictionary, East of th...
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Sniff, sniff

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 26, 2009, 7:30 am
First item on the lunchtime news programme on RAI 1 today was a hurriedly organised photo opportunity for Berlusconi and Benedict 16 at Rome's second airport. B16 said it was a 'joy' to se...
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Noblesse gets nobbled

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 24, 2009, 3:29 am
I wrote a short post almost two years about Italy's ex-Royals, Vittorio Emanuele di Savoia and his appalling family, when the whole ungrateful gang decided to sue the Italian state to the tune of ...
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Mind your language

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 23, 2009, 11:41 am
Productive dialogue is relatively easy among equals, perhaps because it's supported by a kind of openness that occurs when no one feels under threat and when the basic aim of the dialogue - greate...
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Ouch!

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 22, 2009, 12:40 pm
Now I know how to deal with negative reviews. I just need to find the kids...
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Jobs for the boy

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 21, 2009, 11:29 am
Remember him? That's right, it's young Renzo Bossi, son of Umberto "Bingo Bongo" Bossi, currently minister in Papi Berlusconi's cabinet, may god preserve us. Daddy's in charge of refor...
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Busy on Friday?

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 21, 2009, 4:28 am
There's a long post to be written about Fondi and the Mafia, so long that I haven't time to do it today. But I'll find the time, I hope, before Friday when the town will be host to a natio...
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Now is the time to cover your face

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 20, 2009, 7:06 am
To what appears to be general indifference, the press room in Rome city hall has just been dedicated to Oriana Fallaci, the Italian journalist who died three years ago in Florence after having spent m...
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Shut yo' mouth, Part Three

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 19, 2009, 5:15 pm
Last Tuesday evening, prime time television on the main state channel (RAI 1) was devoted to Silvio Berlusconi,as regular readers of this blog will know. Alternatives to Berlusconi - with the exceptio...
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May the force

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 19, 2009, 1:14 am
I love this.
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Information in the free world

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 14, 2009, 12:23 pm
My thanks (or should that be thnaks?) for this to Cynical-C Blog. It's good to know that independent journalism is alive and well and educating its viewers in all corners of the free world. The hi...
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Allegria

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 12, 2009, 8:27 am
Well, Mike Bongiorno's dead. If you've never heard of him you don't live in Italy; if you do and still haven't heard of him, you were walled into a television-free zone many decades ag...
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Mud, to be worn with pride

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 7, 2009, 4:37 pm
Last Friday, Dino Boffo, the editor of the Catholic newspaper, Avvenire, decided to resign after having been attacked and accused of hypocrisy by one of Berlusconi's house rags (Il Giornale, owned...
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Balconies

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 7, 2009, 10:34 am
One of the best things about power is that the rest of us can watch people fall from it. Ceausescu, for example. Who can forget the two-bit tyrant’s face as the crowd beneath his balcony told him, i...
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Ignorance

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 3, 2009, 9:05 am
You can buy this fridge magnet from Mormons Exposed. And that's not all. They also do a great calendar. You must have wondered what those Mormon boys look like with those cute little suits stripp...
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Go to jail. Or not.

Charles L. posted an article on - Sep 2, 2009, 7:01 am
As a sop to the thirsty for blood electorate of the Northern League, who seem to regard anyone born south of Florence as, in the words of their noble leader Umberto Bossi, bingo bongo, the Italian gov...
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Favourite things

Charles L. posted an article on - Aug 29, 2009, 7:52 am
One of my favourite artists (and, I admit it, a very good friend) Paola Casalino will be showing some of her work at Taunton Public Library, Taunton, Somerset, from the 1st to the 12th of September. T...
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Shut yo' mouth, Part Two

Charles L. posted an article on - Aug 28, 2009, 7:11 am
Silvio Berlusconi has just taken the extraordinary step of suing Repubblica on the grounds that the ten questions the newspaper has been asking him (click to embiggen above or see here) since the Pap...
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Shut yo' mouth

Charles L. posted an article on - Aug 27, 2009, 5:28 am
Earlier this year Freedom House placed Italy 73rd in its liberty of the press league table, classifying the country as 'partly free', a status it shares with Turkey, Burkina Faso and Haiti. Th...
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Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover

Charles L. posted an article on - Aug 25, 2009, 5:33 am
A fascinating interview with a great cover designer, and more, on Caustic Cover Critic, one of my favourite blogs: informative, thorughly well-researched and frequently side-splittingly funny. In this...
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Oh my Lord!

Charles L. posted an article on - Aug 24, 2009, 8:40 am

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Thinking about death and contrast in Waltham

Charles L. posted an article on - Aug 23, 2009, 12:45 pm

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Attention

Charles L. posted an article on - Aug 14, 2009, 4:15 pm
I went to the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol yesterday. I've known about the place for years, but the last time I was in Bristol, in autumn 1975, I was looking for a job and don't remember even ...
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Ownership

Charles L. posted an article on - Aug 8, 2009, 1:47 am
I was party to a fascinating, albeit inadvertent social experiment a couple of evenings ago. We were still in Fondi, floored by the sweltering heat of the past month or so. Even our house, which has y...
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Holiday!

Charles L. posted an article on - Aug 6, 2009, 12:49 pm
I'm off on my summer hols tomorrow morning and won't be back for two whole rain-filled weeks (yes, I'm back in the United Kingdom), so try to keep your expectations low as far as my postin...
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The right of the strongest

Charles L. posted an article on - Aug 3, 2009, 2:28 pm
There's a typically Italian kerfuffle going on here at the moment about the authorisation of Ru486, the pill that induces abortion. It's used pretty much everywhere in the developed world, but...
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Aaah, that's better

Charles L. posted an article on - Aug 3, 2009, 8:11 am
See any difference? That's right. I've changed template here so that YouTube videos fit more comfortably, and font size so that you can read me more easily. Any so-called close friend who tell...
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