Simon Gray, Playwright, Dies at 71: Simon Gray, who wrote bitingly comic plays like “Butley,” “Otherwise Engaged” and “Quartermaine’s Terms” about the educated British middle class and whose almost manically confessional late-in-life memoirs turned his sardonic intelligence upon himself, died on Wednesday in London. He was 71. [NYT]
Demons Inner and Outer: If contemporary novelists have not produced a comparable book about the terrorists we face today, the reason may be that the variety of evil that confronts us is so unalluring. There is hardly an American of any political persuasion who sympathizes with Al Qaeda’s vision of Islamic theocracy. Dostoyevsky’s lesson is that it is when evil comes to us wearing the mask of goodness — as it has so often in the past, and certainly will again the future — that we have to be most on our guard. [NY Sun]
Book Of A Lifetime: The Viceroy of Ouidah, by Bruce Chatwin: By rights, I should really hate this rather rococo novella, because its obsession with the ugly side of humanity and its brutal depiction of Africans is almost without redemption. Instead, I find myself swooning at its excesses, and rereading it every time I start writing a new book, in the hope that some of its genius will rub off on me. [Independent]
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