culture

NOTES ON A VOICE: GRAHAM GREENE

Nicholas Shakespeare — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:34:05 +0000

In the second instalment of our series on what makes distinctive writers distinctive, Nicholas Shakespeare tackles Graham Greene ... read more »

THE PLAYLIST: TOP '10

Tim de Lisle — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:40:05 +0000

This year has already brought many excellent rock songs. Tim de Lisle picks the best of them ... read more »

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: A CONTINUOUS FORCE

Ann Wroe — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:31:40 +0000

William Wordsworth didn’t just live in the Lake District—he helped define it. For the sixth in our series of favourite museums, Ann Wroe celebrates Dove Cottage, once his home, now his memorial ... read more »

HOMER V MICKEY

Bee Wilson — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:39:17 +0000

After 20 years “The Simpsons” is almost as established as Disney. Bee Wilson compares and contrasts two giants of pop culture ... read more »

REDESIGNING THE DINOSAUR

Evgeny Morozov — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:19:25 +0000

MEET PLEO, THE POSTHISTORIC PET

Ugobe

Evgeny Morozov reports from the 2007 Pop!Tech conference in Maine, on a toymaker who is reinventing the dinosaur. Except that these new dinosaurs, from the sound of it, will be smarter than the original ones. Not to say, better with children ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE read more »

LETTER FROM PARIS: THE OTHER WRITERS' GROUP

Sarah_Dallas — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:58:29 +0000

SUICIDES, CEMETERIES AND SEXY SENIOR CITIZENS

Sarah Dallas, Cities editor of Economist.com, samples a workshop for aspiring writers at Shakespeare and Co., a socialist utopia masquerading as a Left-Bank bookshop (or possibly the other way round) ...

From our arts blog, MOREOVER

read more »

THE TYPEFACE THAT ATE THE WORLD

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 02:52:59 +0000

SOMETIMES BOLD AND ALWAYS A LITTLE GROTESQUE

Evgeny Morozov catches up with "Helvetica", a documentary film about the history of the near-ubiquitous typeface, and finds it to be a persuasive story in miniature about the globalisation of visual culture ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE read more »

NEWS FROM THE UPPER CLASSES

Anthony Gottlieb — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:42:17 +0000

WHATEVER WOULD P.G. WODEHOUSE HAVE SAID?

Anthony Gottlieb, who wrote on hedonism in this month's Intelligent Life magazine, enjoys an obituary but wonders whether "Wodehouseian" is quite the word for an English aristocrat who lived neither wisely nor well ...

From our arts blog, MOREOVER

THE justly famous obituaries published in Britain’s Daily Telegraph--of which there are several anthologies, including volumes devoted to “Rogues”, “Eccentric Lives” and “Heroes and Adventurers”--regularly celebrate the lives of those who seem to have inhabited worlds that vanished long before they vanished themselves. Last week’s tribute, if that is the word, to Lord Michael Pratt, described him as “one of the last Wodehouseian figures to inhabit London's clubland”, and noted that “he will also be remembered as an unabashed snob and social interloper on a grand scale.”

The epithet “Wodehousian” is raising eyebrows, in this online newsgroup and perhaps in the more literary corners of clubland itself. The Telegraph reported that the late Lord Michael was ejected from a London club (ironically, it is called “Pratt’s”) following “a spectacular altercation with a waitress.” Do the sunny novels of P.G. Wodehouse--home to Jeeves, Bertie Wooster, the gentle Lord Emsworth and his prize pig--really have room for such an unpleasant character? Actually, yes.
read more »

ADVENTURES IN ALTERITY

Robert Cottrell — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:38:41 +0000

GOD, SEX AND OTHER PEOPLE

A short history of "Otherness"--an invaluable concept if you find yourself struggling to make small talk on the academic conference circuit. By Philip Davis, a professor of English literature at Liverpool University, and editor of the Reader magazine...

From our arts blog, MOREOVER

The academic conference season is ending here in England. If you ever have the misfortune to find yourself in such a setting, you only need one word to get by. The word is "Otherness", and it has been in tarnished vogue for some time now. If you are feeling really out of place, then try saying "Alterity" as well. Means the same, sounds even better. You sit in a conference room and you hear so many of these notional terms replacing the reality they purport to describe.

I was brought up in Nottingham, home of D.H. Lawrence, in the English Midlands. When I was a boy, I am afraid that "the Other", in crude slang, meant Sexual Intercourse. As in: "I fancy a bit of the other."

When I next came across the word, at university in Cambridge, it meant God. God was the Other, utterly beyond any anthropomorphic terms of understanding. Anything you can say about God, said the 14th-century mystic Meister Eckhart, is untrue.
read more »

A PRACTITIONER'S GUIDE TO HEDONISM

Robert Cottrell — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 17:50:03 +0000

THE PURSUIT OF PLEASURE IS A COMPLICATED BUSINESS

The Greek philosopher Epicurus has been a victim of muck-raking and slander for more than two thousand years. Anthony Gottlieb sets the record straight, and resurrects some ancient advice on the good life ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, September 2007

WHERE IS is a hedonist to look for his heroes? Not to the religious traditions of the East, to be sure: they lack enthusiasm for the illusory pleasures of this world. The Buddha may have rejected the stony path of asceticism, but he was keener on eliminating desires than on satisfying them. Islam and Christianity are not much help either. They are more interested in pleasing God than in pleasing man. Judaism has managed a happier compromise with the ways of the world. Yet it too, like the other monotheisms, keeps a wary eye open for recriminations from above.

None of the greatest Western philosophers has produced a paean to pleasure that can serve as much of a guide for today’s enlightened hedonist. Philosophers tend to be ruminative, cerebral and cautious. To expect to find a hedonist at work in the groves of academe is rather like expecting to find a vegetarian at work in a slaughter-house.

Thus Kant preached a stern gospel of dutifulness, and Plato’s pleasures were unstintingly abstract and intellectual. A good Platonist would rather contemplate the perfect meal than eat it.
read more »