Simon Cooke
Human Nature - Fact and Fiction
Two unifying principles inform the collection as a whole: it is time, after decades of postmodern critique, for the question of human nature, and humanism, to be brought back into intellectual sphere; and it is time, after an even longer period of academic specialisation, for interdisciplinary dialogue
Everyman
The fear of Death, Roth shows us, might be the fear of the life we could have, maybe should have led. His ‘unchangeable’ story of man stalked by thoughts of his own demise may be a lesson in ‘how to die’. It is also - perhaps because of this - a lesson in how to live.
Edge of the Orison: In the Traces of John Clare’s ‘Journey Out Of Essex’
Sinclair carries out his work in the guise of a kind of hard-boiled druid, both incisively sceptical and visionary. ‘The reality is democratic, anyone can play. All it requires is open eyes and stout boots. Start moving and the path reveals itself.’
