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Talking Corpses ˇ Tim Parks on 'Gomorrah' - 'When Lot lived in Sodom and Gomorrah,' Peter wrote in his Second Epistle, 'he was oppressed and tormented day after day by their lawless deeds.' Having grown up in Naples, Roberto Saviano is similarly tormented and oppressed. Gomorrah is his account of the lawless deeds of the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia. Conveniently assonant as the two names may be, the crimes of Naples are not those we associate with the Cities of the Plain, and Saviano is ...
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On Complaining ˇ Elif Batuman: How to Stay Sane - Flaubert the satirist buried Bouvard and Pécuchet alive beneath an avalanche of names and things and methodologies; Roudinesco the philosopher is offering us a conceptual shovel. What one immediately notices about this shovel is its close resemblance to the avalanche: Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida looks very much like a vast ledger full of entries for 'people who have become things'. (Wou...
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Double Thought ˇ Michael Wood: Kafka in the Office - It's certainly an excellent arrangement,' the official says, 'always unimaginably excellent, even if in other respects hopeless.' We can easily picture, or even recall, arrangements that are excellent for some and hopeless for others, and that is what the phrase 'in other respects' invites us to do. But the larger rhythm and grammar of the sentence ask us to go beyond this option, to think both contrary thoughts at once, taking excellence and hop...
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It's not the bus: it's us ˇ Thomas Sugrue: Stars, Stripes and Civil Rights - In the United States the flag has the status of a religious icon, a totem. It cannot be carried horizontally or flat, but must always be 'aloft and free'. There is a protocol for folding it, it can't touch the ground, it can't be burned except when it is worn out or irreparably damaged and then only as part of a special ritual. Military men and women salute it, civilians hold their right hands over their left breasts when singing 'The Star-Spangl...
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Diary ˇ Keith Gessen: Watching the Rouble Go Down - The financial crisis - or, as we like to call it here, 'the effects of the American and European financial crisis on Russia' - has taken a little while to get going, but it's going now. Yesterday my grandmother sat me down for a serious conversation: she wanted to know if she should take her rouble-denominated life savings out of the Sberbank and put them into dollars. Everyone's a financial adviser now. Or rather, I'm a financial adviser now. Th...
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Help-Self ˇ Jenny Diski on Alastair Campbell's Dodgy Novel - Campbell's novel is about a psychiatrist who is having a breakdown while helping his patients come to terms with their problems . . . Oh, let me evade for a moment more. Campbell's first book was The Blair Years. That was not a novel, but an account of being spin-doctor supreme in the government of Tony Blair. As Blair's director of communications and strategy and then adviser, Campbell was involved, among much else, in presenting the massaged fa...
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I Could Sleep with All of Them ˇ Colm Tóibín on the Mann Family - Thomas and Katia Mann had six children. It was clear from early on that Katia most loved the second child, Klaus, who was born in 1906, and that Thomas loved Erika, the eldest, born in 1905, and also Elisabeth, born in 1918. The other three - the barely tolerated ones - were Golo, born in 1909, Monika, born in 1910, and Michael, born in 1919. Erika remembered a time during the shortages of the First World War when food had to be divided but there...
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Diary ˇ Sanjay Subrahmanyam: Another Booker Flop - It is very hard to define or measure class in India, where data on personal income and assets are extremely hard to come by. It is even harder to know for certain what has happened in the past two decades since economic liberalisation was proclaimed. But there are clearly very rich people in the cities now with fancy imported cars, expensive watches and clothes, and showy lifestyles, and they live side by side with slum-dwellers and those who sle...
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Leaving Paradise ˇ Adam Shatz: Iraqi Jews - On 27 April 1950 a man whose passport identified him as Richard Armstrong flew from Amsterdam to Baghdad. He came as a representative of Near East Air Transport, an American charter company seeking to win a contract with Iraq's prime minister, Tawfiq al-Suwaida, to fly Iraqi Jews to Cyprus. Only six weeks earlier, the Iraqi government had passed the Denaturalisation Act, which allowed Jews to emigrate provided they renounced their citizenship, an...
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Letters - The letters page from London Review of Books Volume 30 issue 22...
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Table of contents - Table of contents from London Review of Books Volume 30 issue 22...
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A New Toy: Corel Painter Essentials 4 - Oops, I mean, new tool! It's for WORK, right? (Just nod and smile like you believe me .) I've been coveting a decent software package ever since I switched to the ...
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Art and Lifelong Learning - Many Drawing/Sketching readers are just coming back to art after years spent focusing on career and family. It's wonderful to hear from people who have rediscovered their creative side and ...
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Graphite Pencil FAQ - Choosing and Using Pencils - Need to know what the 'H' and 'B' and those numbers mean? Which one to pick for line drawing, which one for shading? And can you use an eraser, or ...
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Colored Pencil Tips - Getting started in colored pencil drawing? Check out these colored pencil drawing tips. Also read the Colored Pencil Basics article for an introduction to hatching, scumbling and burnishing in colored ...
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Draw a Dragon - Step by Step - Drawing dragons is great fun, and you can really let your imagination run wild. If you aren't sure where to start, have a go at this easy fire breathing dragon ...
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Grids / Copying / Tracing - When I last featured an article on Grid Drawing step-by-step, some of our forum members shared some brilliant ideas for making it a bit easier. Try some of these ...
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Life Drawing: Drawing the Human Figure - Attending a life class is an essential part of traditional art training. Often life drawing groups are run by community centers and art groups, so that even if you can't ...
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Paper Review: Generic Sketchbooks - Who hasn't used a generic sketchbook? You know, those ones from the bottom shelf at the art store, just a few dollars. Some have a cardboard back and a ...
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Are You an Art Mom? - Benjamin Krevolin at The Huffington Post has come up with an alternative to Joe the Plumber: Amy the Art Mom. It's an interesting article, though it has less to do ...
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Draw a Manga Head in Three-Quarter View - Guest artist Preston Stone continues his series of easy-to-follow beginner Manga articles with a lesson on drawing the head in three-quarter view. You can really tie yourself up in knots ...
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