The Lone Caner

Wilfred Thesiger, who died in 2003, was the last of the old land explorers, whose likes included Burton, Speke, Younghusband, Lawrence, Connolly, Hedin, Amundsen, and stretched as far back as Marco Polo. Fluent in Arabic and French Thesiger was the first European to cross and extensively map the dreaded Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia, and wrote acclaimed travelogues of now-vanished times in the middle east, and the Marsh Arabs of Iraq.  An unashamed Arabist, he loved the great empty silences of the desert, and the nomadic culture of the Bedu; he much preferred to travel and live the way they [Click here for the full review…]

The other day I was having a spirited discussion with a friend of mine in Toronto.  He cautiously started a sentence: “The fall of Constantinople in the 16th century…” “1453.” I said He gave me a doubtful look.  It’s not one of those facts you expect a half drunk guest to have at his fingertips, and I kinda feel for him there. It was sort of unexpected. “Are you sure?” “1453, April to May, when the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the 2nd laid siege to the city, then took it by storm. It marked the end of the Byzantine empire and the flood of émigrés [Click here for the full review…]

I don’t know of anyone from my generation who did not at least hear of Doom.  This one game – first released in 1993 – was the single most eagerly awaited offering of any software company to that time, was a landmark event that crashed the servers of the hosting BBS one minute after the midnight “opening”, and was reputedly the second most common reason quoted for the loss of productivity in offices worldwide (solitaire being the first). As a working pro who corrupted every team of auditors for three years into playing deathmatch games after hours in our darkened offices, I [Click here for the full review…]

  What an enormous, sprawling, wide-ranging, dense, tragic, magisterial narrative has Robert Fisk spun out of his journalistic experiences. I have read Edward Said’s works on the Middle East, Huntigndon’s “Clash of Civilizations,” and passed through many histories of that troubled part of the world, but it is my considered opinion that this outcome of thirty years’ reporting there is in a class by itself. Personal, compelling, well-researched and passionately written, it is on a par with “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” for unbridled emotional and intellectual impact. Fisk’s writing is a tour of the modern history of the [Click here for the full review…]

Then came the flood, sent by gods’ intent… And Ea [gave] this advice to me: “Arise and hear my words: Abandon your home and build a boat Choose to live and choose to love… Be moderate as you flee for survival In a boat that has no place for riches Take the seed of all you need aboard…” Tablet XI, Column i, The Epic of Gilgamesh Aside from historical and biblical scholars, not many people know about The Epic of Gilgamesh, though my research suggests that the character seems to be somewhat of a subterrannean cultural icon and is referenced quite often in [Click here for the full review…]

On the Road was the shot across the bow of an older generation, and heralded a new direction in American letters. Jack Kerouac pioneered the ‘stream of consciousness’ narrative style and dream worlds made flesh, flashbacks, flashforwards, plot departures and side trips, meandering soliloquies and sounded the first thrum of the counterculture. It is the Star Trek of the hippie sixties, presaging much of what came later, its uniqueness seen mostly in retrospect At all times biographical, On the Road is a journey into the mental state and physical surroundings of Sal and his friends, who disdain the middle class existence they have (and about [Click here for the full review…]

“Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger, seems to be one of those books one either loves or hates.  Ostensibly the sory of one bored, directionless rich kid’s sojourn in New York, this short novel presaged the counterculture of the 1960s by over a decade, and arguably fired the imagination of an entire generation of post-war Americans like no other novel since. The reclusiveness of the author, and its being found in the effects of two high-profile American assassins, have merely raised public awareness of the book and enhanced the reputation surrounding it. People either despise its antihero or [Click here for the full review…]

“Red Mars” by Kim Stanley Robinson is probably the best hard science fiction tale of planetary colonization ever written, and is followed by two sequels, neither of which rise to the greatness of this first novel. It harks back to the Golden Age of science fiction in the forties and fifties, when John W. Campbell edited Astounding Stories and pioneered similar types of narrative, where real men and women dealt with the universe in logical, almost engineering-like ways. “Red Mars” spans a period of some fifty years, and has elements of utopionaism, dystopianism, politics, engineering, technological futurism and interpersonal dynamics [Click here for the full review…]