 | 07:33 pm - 'Fag end' does not mean what you think it means
The Curious Mr Tarrant ends on a distinctly woo-woo note, totally unexpected of these suave New Yorkers who smoke and drink and summer in New Hampshire. But googling reveals the author to be a devotee of Gurdjieff, which explains why the protag gets sent into exile to achieve some kind of higher plane.
One has come to expect Christmas depressions these days. Not helped by the heavy dank cold and grey of TO in its worst winter guise. Walking is doubtless good for the spirit and the waistline, but lord is it tiring when you haven't done it consistently since summer.
That being the case, I probably shouldn't be reading Angus Wilson's Anglo-Saxon Attitudes. Rereading, actually: but the small-souled nature of mid-century satire evidently didn't bother me in my 30s, and oh but it does now. Wilson, Burgess, Amis (both of them)- didn't these guys ever like anyone? Or were they all possessed by the withered spirit of Evelyn Waugh? (OK, by the withered living ghost of Evelyn Waugh, since he overlapped several of them.)
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