Catherine Vigier

Derek Walcott on CLR James and cricket.

April 3, 2015 by William Eaton

In his collection of essays, What the Twilight Says, Nobel prize-winning poet Derek Walcott discusses, among other things, fellow writers of the Caribbean, including the Marxist historian CLR James. In his short piece on James, Walcott explores the seeming contradiction between the writer’s unrelenting combat against Empire and the racism it engendered, and his love for the very British game of cricket. James’s Beyond a Boundary is probably less well known than his classic work The Black Jacobins, the history […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: History, literature, race

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The haunting Kiss of the Fur Queen

March 27, 2015 by William Eaton

Sometimes you read a story so beautiful it stays in your head for days, and you keep going back to it, trying to understand how it got such a hold on your imagination. Kiss of the Fur Queen is that kind of story. Tomson Highway’s heartbreaking semi-autobiographical novel is about two Cree Indian brothers, Champion and Ooneemeetoo, who spend the early years of their childhood on a reservation in Northern Manitoba. Baptized Jeremiah and Gabriel, they are sent to a […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: childhood, homosexuality, sexual assault

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Flann O’Brien and The Hard Life

March 20, 2015 by William Eaton

Just after St. Patrick’s Day is a good time to have a laugh reading Flann O’Brien, pseudonym of Brian O Nolan, one of the most satirical Irish writers ever. In the late 1930s and throughout the 40s, when there was nothing much to laugh about in the New Irish State, O Nolan kept up a steady barrage of satire in his novels and newspaper columns which spared none of those in power. The Hard Life was published in 1961, but […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier • Tags: literature

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Harvest : the bitter fruits of xenophobia

March 13, 2015 by William Eaton

In Harvest, Jim Crace explores what happens in an isolated feudal village when a trio of outsiders set up camp on the common land and attempt to claim squatters’ rights. The villagers destroy the intruders’ makeshift camp and remain silent when they are wrongly accused of setting fire to the Master’s stable. The severe punishment meted out to the newcomers is not contested by any of the villagers, including Walter Thirsk, from whose point of view the story is narrated. […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: literature

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Catch-22 in the 21st Century

January 30, 2015 by William Eaton

Although set on a US Air force base on a small island in the Mediterranean during World War Two, Catch-22 is a satirical attack on the workings of modern bureaucracy that is still relevant today. It points out very clearly, and with great accuracy, how organizational goals get diverted and perverted by the ferocious competition for power among those at the top. It shows how this competition wastes time, resources, and ultimately human lives, as ambition drives mediocre men to […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: literature

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Does Brokeback Mountain need a happy ending?

January 23, 2015 by William Eaton

In a recent interview in The Paris Review, Annie Proulx said that she regretted writing Brokeback Mountain. She said she wished she’d never written the story, and that it had “just been the cause of hassle and problems and irritation since the film came out.” This was because of the way readers — especially male ones — kept hassling her about the ending. It should’ve been a happy ending, they claim. Proulx says: “They all begin the same way – I’m […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: film, homosexuality, literature, writing

Amnesia: hackers and subversion in Australia

January 16, 2015 by William Eaton

[email_link] Amnesia begins with a hacker known as Angel. She releases a computer worm which opens the gates of CIA-sponsored prisons around the world. Many of these are in Australia. Some suspected terrorists manage to escape; others are shot by prison guards. Angel goes on the run. Her mother, a well-known actress, asks investigative journalist Felix Moore to write the girl’s life story. The idea is to create a wave of public sympathy for her and help her avoid extradition […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, crime, History, literature, politics

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After the Charlie Hebdo massacre, business as usual?

January 9, 2015 by William Eaton

[print_link][email_link] With all France stunned and sickened by the assassinations at Charlie Hebdo magazine, the political establishment is scrambling to present the situation to its best advantage. A tweet from the French President at the Elysée Palace, reproduced in Vanity Fair, shows François Hollande on the phone. The subtitle says Obama expresses American solidarity. The article quotes President Obama: France is America’s oldest ally, and has stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States in the fight against terrorists […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: assassination, cartoons, France, Middle East, politics, terror

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Marianne Faithfull’s chant of resistance

January 2, 2015 by William Eaton

Sixties icon Marianne Faithfull, who now lives in Paris, did a great concert in Rouen a few weeks ago. I was intrigued by ‘Mother Wolf’, one of the songs she sang from her new album, Give My Love to London. Mother Wolf, a character taken from Kipling’s Jungle Book, is of harboring a cub that isn’t hers. She defies her accusers, replying that he is hers now and that she’ll fight to the death anyone who says he isn’t. She […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: politics, women

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