BEN PHILLIPS > Recent Status Updates

A bit dated, even troubling in parts. I enjoyed his musings over family as his day progressed but overall disappointing (notwithstanding the great title).

Franzen moves between surgical analysis, impossible intellectual vigour, intense empathy and vulnerability, and then a clinical and emotional combo-ed ability to bring things to a logical conclusion. Loved most of these lectures, essays, speeches and stories (though often feeling out of my depth and looking a word up), but v v glad to have again ventured into Franzen non-fiction (all the better for it).

One of the glories of literature is that you can reach 59 and only just discover someone of the ilk of Doris Lessing. The Sweetest Dream considers the crassness of ideologies bound to fail because humans (almost always men) cannot stick to the script. Ego, weakness, selfishness, etc. Enter selfless women to the fray, trying to sort out the v real mess the stinky adolescent boys have left in their wake.

Beautiful and mystical, yet heartbreakingly real at the same time. You can see where the masterpieces to come were born.

Brilliant- I love the way she conjures such visceral images with analogies and imagery. Powerful and nuanced perspectives you can’t ignore.

Heartbreaking. A beautifully imagined life.