Month: September 2017

Greene’s ‘The Quiet American’

There must be two major caveats to giving Greene’s novels a 5-star rating. First, the way the characters come to symbolise their countries can’t help but be a little strained. Second, the book is drenched in a kind of soft orientalism, which plays out mostly in the character of Phuong, so distand and unfathomable, so […]

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Alan Moore’s Providence Act 3

Moore recuperates the problems of the earlier issues in this final, clever, Act. The problems in the earlier issues were narrative ones — and it’s pretty instructive, from a writing point of vier. The journalist Black’s desire to write a history of New England occult culture lacks stakes. That is, there’s nothing compelling — either […]

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