Articles about things I love. Mostly old things.
Sundays were the reason I fell in love with Peanuts. During my formative years, it was always Sunday in Charlie Brown’s world. My initial impression of Peanuts wasn’t formed by encountering the daily strip in the newspaper or by catching a rare UK showing of a Peanuts TV special. It wasn’t even shaped by the […]
Peanuts on Sunday: Snoopy’s adventures in liminal space Read More »
Peanuts, Charles M. Schulz’s daily comic, ended on February 13, 2000 after 50 years of publication and approximately 18,000 strips. It was an incredible feat of creativity, but did the author manage to ‘stick the landing’? Today that phrase has become commonplace to assess whether a successful and long-running story concluded in a satisfying manner.
Requiem for the Round-headed Kid: how ‘Peanuts’ ended Read More »
Sam Shepard often seemed more of an American myth than a man. His short, surreal prose pieces both unpack and undermine that frontier persona… “He’s like a Sam Shepard character.” This, somewhat recursively, is how I first heard Sam Shepard described. I knew nothing of his work until I heard theatre critic Mel Gussow explain
Sam Shepard road trip: Super Cowboys and Strange Motels Read More »
The 1968 debates between Gore Vidal and Willam F Buckley have already been litigated in print and documented on film. What can be learned from bringing Best of Enemies to the stage? It’s said that politics makes for strange bedfellows. Best of Enemies, currently showing at the Young Vic, proves that it can make for
‘Best of Enemies’ stages a Buckley-Vidal rematch Read More »
How a short lifestyle column, about the pleasures of completing early-morning errands, got lodged in my brain for two decades… If actions speak louder than words, then the actions that we take routinely and automatically can seem to speak loudest of all. People’s lives are defined by routines. When they try to change their habits
Carrot and Stick and Caffeine Read More »
