Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • A videogame: how sad

    A videogame: how sad

    I’ve always run a bit behind the times with video games, although I’ve been a fan since the early 80s, so it’s very unusual for me to have played through a state of the art game less than six months after release. As I’ve also just recently emerged from the Mac gaming ghetto, I haven’t… Read more

  • Generous manoeuvres in the cosmic dark

    Generous manoeuvres in the cosmic dark

    Juice Aleem has an inclusive attitude to his cosmic voyage. There seems very little reason for anyone seeking to revalue the markers of difference by which they have been excluded to invite white people along for the ride, but Juice Aleem makes very clear that they, along with a list that includes more or less… Read more

  • Unofficial beauty

    Unofficial beauty

    Pingu, a TV series I enjoyed entirely as an adult, has a special place in my heart similar to that reserved for the cultural artifacts of my childhood. For one thing it was on TV when the spawn was small; for another it has a brilliantly infectious, funky theme tune (that loops in about five… Read more

  • Impossible spanners

    Impossible spanners

    I read a book about the thought of Pierre Bourdieu to prepare for reading this, since I knew it leaned heavily on Bourdieu’s theories – ‘cultural capital’ is a concept that Bourdieu introduced and defined. In Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation John Guillory is not discussing that concept in general, but specifically… Read more

  • Enjoy with a mince pie

    Enjoy with a mince pie

    This very pretty (in a tasteful, minimalist way) Faber edition of Simon Armitage’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was given to me for Christmas so that I could read it aloud to my painfully cultured spouse and spawn. I’m not sure if I can call it a translation, as I don’t really think of… Read more

  • It’s about time

    It’s about time

    I didn’t know anything much about early C.18 English history before I went to see The Favourite, even less about its director, Yorgos Lanthimos, and nothing at all about the film. I’ve since read up a little on some of those topics; not extensively, but enough to have a vague idea what the hell it… Read more