Author Archive: Peter Jakobsen
The Trial
(by Franz Kafka) An offense to natural justice, this nightmare procedural (originally entitled ‘The Process’) has K finding all about how but nothing about why. Kafka’s famous novel interprets both the times and the inhumanity of the human condition.
Continue Reading →The Aeneid
Virgil - A Roman Representation.
(by Virgil) Iliad begat Aenid begat Commedia…Virgil links two classic works 2,000 years apart with a masterpiece of his own, wherein Aeneas goes to Rome and wreaks Trojan revenge on the successors of Attic Greece, with everyone satisfyingly getting what’s coming to them. Full of images and phrases resplendent either in English or in dodgy Latin. Thus Walter Pater (in Appreciations) “I am reading over again the Aeneid, certain verses of which I repeat to myself to satiety. There are phrases there which stay in one’s head, by which I find myself beset, as with those musical airs which are…
Continue Reading →Talleyrand
(by Duff Cooper) When told that those who fell in with Napoleon had “betrayed the cause of Europe”, Talleyrand replied that was “a question of dates”. A legendary survivor, his apparent inconsistency seems to have less to do with a lack of morals than with the exigencies of geopolitics. This elegant biography of the wily, oleaginous and adaptable diplomat-statesman, serving French Kings from Louis XVI to Louis-Philippe, was written by Duff Cooper, who knew a thing or two about difficult men (and women).
Continue Reading →Cards Against Humanity – The Rolling Stones
Tired? Beat? Beyond blue? Why not Play Cards against Humanity? It is pure evil and a great way to relax. Note that the rumoured hidden (ultra un-PC) answer card, said to be secreted in the lid of the box, only features in limited editions. The standard answer cards are offensive enough! Adelaide is calming down after the Rolling Stones hit town. They performed a very tight and exultant set at the Adelaide Oval (see: “The greatest game of football ever played”). Not 24 hours later we had an electrical storm to rival that of Key Largo so I guess the…
Continue Reading →Wise Blood
(by Flannery O’Connor) You can almost hear Father Ted saying, “Those Protestants; up to no good as usual.”. A slight but hysterical piece of southern Grand-Guignol in which O’Connor, in stark muscular prose, shows us why warmer climes tend to grow lusher fruit (viz., the evangelists in northern Queensland, the Spanish Inquisition, etc.). O’Connor presents her freak show without explanation, comment or censure and you close the book as if you’ve just escaped the weird tent, gasping for air.
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