Author Archives: Houyhnhnm

Rowan the wizard

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Houyhnhnm

Rowan Williams is how we imagine Pozzo’s Lucky in the days when he used to delight his master with his ‘thinking’ (Waiting for Godot, Act One:) He even used to think very prettily once, I could listen to him for … Continue reading →

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19th-century Paris and the Net

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Houyhnhnm

Strange the way we misinterpret. An essay by Morozov in the New York Times (discussed by John Naughton in the Observer, 120212) compares (by the by, as far as this post is concerned) the net to 19th-century Paris: the labyrinthine … Continue reading →

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“The Tao Of Pooh” by Benjamin Hoff; “The Secret Message Of Jesus” by Brian Maclaren (the latter only skimmed)

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Houyhnhnm

Both try to explain how life should be lived, and to that extent are self-help books. Maclaren writes from within an orthodox US Christian perspective, but reinterprets Jesus’ message as a call to a radical politics and a suspicion of … Continue reading →

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“He’s Just Not That Into You”

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Houyhnhnm

The kind of set-up that you find in foreign films at Curzon cinemas: the lives of several young people come together in different ways; subplots cross over and merge, weaving a meditation on love and humanity. This one though doesn’t … Continue reading →

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“Are We There Yet?”

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Houyhnhnm

Awful comedy with some very funny gross bits (man holding a boy who’s urinating in a woman’s face; boy (same one) causing a near-pile-up by projectile-vomiting over a windscreen; and the man fighting a deer is funny too, albeit ungross. … Continue reading →

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“The Invention of Lying”

Posted on February 11, 2012 by Houyhnhnm

Ricky Gervais weaves together Gulliver’s Travels and the Midas myth to create a funny and provocative anti-religion story, yet as usual one which attacks merely the straw man of Sunday-School religion: no worries for the modern C of E… ;-). … Continue reading →

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Fictional characters’ worlds

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Houyhnhnm

Sherlock Holmes lives in a London identical to the one in which Conan Doyle’s books about him were published, except that it contained no books about him by Conan Doyle. Doctor Who couldn’t watch Doctor Who. Novels, in the very … Continue reading →

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“Latin forms of address from Plautus to Apuleius” by Eleanor Dickey

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Houyhnhnm

Beautifully written and produced – hardly a single typo throughout. Her introduction is a fascinating survey of forms of address across languages, and is particularly interesting on English. Although much of the detail is there more for scholarly completeness than … Continue reading →

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Forgiveness

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Houyhnhnm

Mark 11.12-26 And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry: And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, … Continue reading →

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Guilt

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Houyhnhnm

No one knows the origin of the Old English word “gylt” (“a crime”), but by the late 17th century it had developed its modern meaning of “a sense of having done wrong”, rather than just the “doing wrong” in the … Continue reading →

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