Charles Lambert's Blog
November 24, 2009
A couple of weeks ago I met up with Rob, the man behind one of the most interesting and wide-ranging literary blogs around, The Fiction Desk. We had an excellent lunch and talked about, among other things, writing, publishing strategies, power and casual cruelty. This is the result. And this is me standing in front of a wall on Via Ostiense in Rome, a few yards from where I work.
November 23, 2009
Today's thought comes from The Waste Books, by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg:It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.
November 22, 2009
November 21, 2009
The France Soir correspondent in Rome, Ariel Dumont, has just been sacked for being anti-Berlusconian. This isn't what the paper says, of course. The editor talks about the need to rationalise its overseas representation for reasons of budget and denies any pressure from the newspaper's owner. France Soir is controlled by 23-year-old Alexander Pugachev, the son of the Russian oligarch Sergei Pugachev, the 605th richest man in the world, ex-Chekhist and close friend of Putin. Berlusconi, by...
November 20, 2009
November 19, 2009
People in Britain are right to be worried about the BNP, but even Griffin and his mean-spirited cronies might think twice before imitating the Northern League council of Colacchio*, a small town near Brescia. As part of their Yuletide festivities they've decided to conduct a door-to-door search for immigrants whose permit to stay has run out and expel any they find forthwith, and certainly by 25 December. This might not sound very Christmassy to you, accustomed to the notion that the...
November 15, 2009
That Berlusconi and his associates don't trust certain magistrates hardly needs repeating. But it's odd how much faith they put in the due process of law when they're trying to shut up someone inconvenient. SB's already brought cases against newspapers in Italy and abroad, so far without success, but that isn't as important as establishing that acts of criticism will lead to substantial, even crippling lawyers' fees to prove their legitimacy. Now one of his right-hand men, Renato Schifani, a...
November 13, 2009
This cleverly designed bag with the handy noose-shaped handle might be the closest we'll ever get to seeing justice done in Italy. It's the old story. You've read it here on this blog a tedious number of times and pretty much anywhere else that's talked about Italy in the past twenty years. It's the one that begins: 'In any normal western democracy...' and then goes on to describe the latest exploits of a governing class that has never quite grasped the concepts of shame or accountability...
