Berfrois

August 2017

  • Psycho, Staged by Eric D. Lehman

    August 2017 Highlights

    Psycho, Staged by Eric D. Lehman

    Like it or not, the novel is no longer considered “sensationlistic trash,” and has been firmly established as part of literary history and culture now.

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Invited to the Best Parties

Invited to the Best Parties

We all know that a book can change the shape of history. Think The Communist Manifesto and Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, not to mention the Bible and the Koran. But a book review? How much influence could a book review possibly have?

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‘Third Culture Kids have yet another filter to their perspective’

‘Third Culture Kids have yet another filter to their perspective’

It was a startling thing to me to realize that the African Americans in my college were so different from the Nigerians I had grown up with.

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So Unnatural an Activity

So Unnatural an Activity

To the uninitiated it can be hard to understand why anyone would go hiking. Today’s fleece- and Gore-Tex–clad masses may take for granted the attraction of spending weekends doing what...

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Jessica Sequeira on Mara Pastor

Jessica Sequeira on Mara Pastor

As a poetic symbol, the scar might seem to be hopelessly banal and overwrought. For Mara Pastor, the scar is not just a symbol for romantic pain...

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Joe Linker: The Body of Christ and Body Politic

Joe Linker: The Body of Christ and Body Politic

He argues that religion is politics. To ignore talking about either is to miss the point in a vapid exercise of politeness. But to talk about politics and religion in a qualified academic argument is not to rant and rave.

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Narrowed Web

Narrowed Web

Even as the Web has grown, however, it has narrowed. Google now controls nearly ninety per cent of search advertising, Facebook almost eighty per cent of mobile social traffic.

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“Software and digital devices are imbued with the values of their creators”

“Software and digital devices are imbued with the values of their creators”

“People imagine that programming is logical, a process like fixing a clock,” Ellen Ullman writes in her essay “Outside of Time: Reflections on the Programming Life.” “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

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From loose teeth to rubber boots to hardened pieces of chewing gum…

From loose teeth to rubber boots to hardened pieces of chewing gum…

How best to follow up a six-volume, 3,600-page, terrifically indiscreet autobiographical novel that cops to infidelity, self-mutilation, premature ejaculation, alcoholism, attraction to reactionary politics and ambivalence about fatherhood?

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Lital Khaikin: To Justify Land #3

Lital Khaikin: To Justify Land #3

In Southern Siberia, where the Sayan Mountains rise over the heavy chest of confluence of Central Asia, the Buryat peoples have told legends about the ancient lake Baikal and his beautiful daughter Angara.

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The History of 16th-Century Narcoleptic Walruses

The History of 16th-Century Narcoleptic Walruses

Magnus wanted to present the North as an impenetrable region of wonders and marvels — flesh-eating Scricfinns, magicians, vast whirlpools, and flaming volcanoes — at the very edge of the known world.

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Of Locomotives and Old Wood

Of Locomotives and Old Wood

In the Fifties as today, there is nothing to be done in Mürren but listen to silence, broken only by the habitual click-clack and whirr of the brown electric train.

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That Guerrilla Frisson, Though

That Guerrilla Frisson, Though

It has become customary, at literary festivals in these troubled times to speak of translation in its myriad, metamorphic dimensions as something of a panacea for the world’s ills.

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“Croatian spin doctors used an age-old pattern”

“Croatian spin doctors used an age-old pattern”

Ethnic labelling is not only incorrect, but simplifies things completely. I have lived in the Netherlands for almost twenty years, and I have a Dutch passport and a fierce loyalty to this society that has left me in peace to do what I know best; write.

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45 and Low

45 and Low

Do you think that after the nuclear trigger is pulled that any of the survivors will be able to honestly say that on some level they didn’t always know that it was bound to happen this way?

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