Rattlebag and Rhubarb – Some of this. And some of that.
Some of this. And some of that.| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
Some of this. And some of that.| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
My first book for the #1925Club was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes where Anita Loos makes several sly, satirical references to the journalist, critic and public intellectual H. L. Mencken. He is unmistakably the model for one of her characters and a source of some of the book’s humor. Mencken admired Loos’s wit and he was one of her literary champions. She wrote it…Continue Reading→| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
Karel Čapek’s Letters from England (1925) “’You must begin from the beginning,’ I was advised, but as I have now been for ten days on this Babel of an island the beginning has got lost. What am I to begin with? Fried bacon, or the Exhibition at Wembley? Mr. Shaw, or the London policemen?” That is how Letters from England…Continue Reading→| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
Here are two poems by H.D. neither of which were written in 1925 but both of which were included in her Collected Poems of that year. Storm You crash over the trees, you crack the live branch— the branch is white, the green crushed, each leaf is rent like split wood. You burden the trees with black drops, you swirl…Continue Reading→| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
Agatha Christie’s “The Witness for the Prosecution”: Truth, Lies, and a Perfect Performance Christie published The Secret of Chimneys in 1925 and you can read an amusingly scathing review here. I am sure others may have more positive things to say. But Christie also published something else that year – a short story that has had a remarkable second life …Continue Reading→| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
“Richmal Crompton, I salute you.” That is the final sentence of Kate Atkinson’s afterword to her novel A God in Ruins. (2015). She is acknowledging, of course, her debt to Crompton’s William stories. Atkinson’s novel follows the life of Teddy Todd – would-be poet, bomber pilot, husband, father, and grandfather – as he navigates the turbulence of the twentieth century.…Continue Reading→| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
The Illuminating Diary of a Professional LadyReading Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes “A gentleman friend and I were dining at the Ritz last evening and he said that if I took a pencil and a p…| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
“While sketching in the street, Eardley would set her easel up on a child’s pushchair. Andrew, then twelve, cheekily asked, ‘Do you want to paint me, missus?’ And she did. Ann remembers: ‘My mum said to Andrew, “I want to know where you’re going after school.” And he said, “I’m going to a woman’s house.” She got him by the…Continue Reading→| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
Parody and Where Engels Fears to Tread “One always apologises for writing parodies; it is a disreputable activity, ranking only a little higher on the scale of literary activity than plagiarism. A …| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
I keep returning to Unquiet Landscape: Places and Ideas in 20th Century British Painting because it’s that kind of book – one that invites rereading. Neve’s introduction is a guide to h…| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?” – Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice Nicola Sturgeon, the divisive former First Minister of Scotland,…| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
What if the man you’re rooting for in a wartime darkly comic thriller is also a serial killer? In Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper (1943), Donald Henderson gives us just that: a shabby, lonely public-sc…| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
All this week The Daily Poem from The Paris Review has featured work by Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis. In other words, it is featuring the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa (18…| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
