Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
A Necessary Correction
Arthur Griffith: the most misunderstood major figure in modern Irish history
Post-Punk Polymath
It is no surprise that such an outstanding lyricist as Elvis Costello should be able to deliver such an engaging autobiography. And for a man who used to punch out an album with a free EP, plus a brace of…
Saved by Rock ’n’ Roll
In the 1950s, when Susan Sontag was a young woman, high culture, middlebrow culture and pop culture existed in hermetically sealed spheres. In her writings on pop and as a pioneer of film studies in the English language cultural sphere,…
Bad Blood
The ‘blood libel’, the notion that Jews were kidnapping and murdering Christian children for ritual purposes, was not created by poor and ignorant people but rather by rich and powerful ones, who found the persecution and murder of Jews sometimes…
Philosophy in UCD
What kind of place was Dublin’s main university for Catholic students at a time when Ireland was just beginning to be affected by the youth and other revolutions and when the Catholic Church was at the very beginning of a…
The Vault of Feeling
Kevin Stevens’s assured new novel explores the difficulties faced by a young immigrant of Arab and Muslim background in small-town America, difficulties which include racism and the weight of overbearing tradition, but which can be countered by friendship, love and…
Home From Cyberia
In a world in which we are offered so much instant gratification by technology, in which we have become hooked to it to an unprecedented degree, the self is not augmented but depleted. And we are so distracted that we…
If You Liked This …
The eminent Milanese writer and publisher Roberto Calasso, chairman of Adelphi Edizioni, has an unusual recipe for commercial success: publish only books that you think are of the highest quality, and become known for publishing only books of the highest…
Really, I’m Stuffed
The drive for material goods may well be too deeply entrenched in human beings to be eliminated but perhaps a consciousness that we now have material prosperity beyond our spiritual competence to deal with could lead to more considered patterns…
Awkward Voices
A new biographical study focuses on four nationalist intellectuals who at first seemed to support the Easter Rising and the War of Independence but afterwards questioned if it had been worthwhile: Eimar O’Duffy, PS O’Hegarty, George Russell (AE) and Desmond…
Truculent Priest
In a series of radical critiques published in the 1970s Ivan Illich questioned educational practice, managerialism and the medical profession. Though he could be arrogant, inconsistent and even plain silly, Illich had important things to say about modernity.
No Homes To Go To
Dorothy Macardle was a friend of de Valera, an historian of the idea of the Irish Republic and a novelist. Her story ‘The Uninvited’, memorably filmed in 1944 with Ray Milland, is a haunted house tale set in Cornwall but…