Comments on Yesterday: V.S. Naipaul

Something tells me you and Terry Eagleton would get along great, Charles.

Womenopause.

Wow, DID they actually refer to Time's Arrow (1992) as a "recent experiment"? I would take that whole piece with a grain of salt.

Fuck Terry Eagleton. Seriously, fuck him and fuck anyone else who describes himself as a Marxist. The ideologies derived from Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism and others have killed far more people than fascism ever managed to. Making them more repulsive than fascism is their claim that shedding this blood was necessary to build a better world. Anyone in 2007 who describes himself as a Marxist should be treated with the same withering contempt as anyone describing himself as a fascist or a Nazi.

Maybe you should ask Dan that question.

i'm still digesting this one: "...he puffed through roll-ups, winding up the back row with his eased-up, fag-honed tones."

them britishers sure gots fancy terms for smoking!

In the UK there were also the 07/07 attacks on the London Subways, it's not merely 9/11. Yes, god forbid some people from casting off a horrid relic of an ideology (marxism, maoism, whatever) and realizing that their are larger threats to civilization than an gender/ethnic studies department getting reduced funding. I agree with the above commentator, anyone who still brandishes the label of "marxist" should be equated with anyone still calling themselves a "facist."

In Hitchens' case I think his former liberal cred coupled with his willingness to shill for the neocon position with rhetoric that resonates with liberals ("they're coming for our freedoms!" essentially) plus his native irascibility make him a natural pundit, which seems to be paying him well. He sounds very sure of himself and very British and that makes for good TV.

The reasons for Rushdie's current position on radical Islam seem pretty obvious.

For the others? Maybe grouchy-old-man disease? Maybe the tendency for yesterday's radicals to become today's entrenched establishment? People with mortgages and alimony tend to become more conservative.

I know what a comb-over is, but what is a Charlton comb-over?

The issue here seems to be that these writers need to up-mod their wardrobe a bit; they need to go from "frumpy-stale" to "frumpy-chic".

It's time to lose the whole padded elbow thing, it's played out and carries too much historical baggage, & it's as cliché as cargo pants on trustifarians. Their shoes should have a restrained pizzaz, utilitarian with a touch of flair. Earth toned ties are tried and true, but can be boring, add a platinum clip/cufflink set for an elegant twist. Throw on a nice belt, maybe opt for a pocketwatch.

No more will the masses think you're some mumbly old fart, but relevant again and lookin' good for revolution.

Rushdie has been railing against radical Islam since well before 9/11, and, as #8 notes, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out why. There's also a fundamental difference between Rushdie, and Hitchens and Amis. Rushdie is actually sympathetic to moderal Muslims and doesn't try to demonize all of Islam.

http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly030709a.htm

obviously

Martin Amis needs to spend some time posting hot snapshots of the United Bitches of Benetton to the Time Out London blog, maybe drop a little Foucault, a little Nabokov. Then he'd be a writer worth considering.