Pick your link:
Berger is possibly the only Germanophone actor of his generation who became a truly international star (or, for the lack of better word in my vocabulary, a world-class diva).
Iâve been meaning to watch that de Sica film for ages but I must admit not knowing this actor at all. And I do know a fair number of German actors from back then as I watch quite a lot of films.
Damn. I liked his acting. Hope his family can cope.
BBC News - Rolf Harris: Serial abuser and ex-entertainer dies aged 93
I was going to post Martin Amisâs death but I just thought âwhy bother? I didnât like himâ. For someone so quintessentially English I think he was in thrall to the 20th century American idea of the novel: rich white men writing âimportantâ books about wanking and whatever. He was funny, obviously a total, unbearable, dick, so he could be interesting in short doses.
He shared with his great friend Hitchens a talent for inserting himself into conversations which would be better without his presence (as well as arrogance, bullying, and smugness). Nowhere did this become more apparent than in their reaction to the Saudi terrorist attacks on the US in 2001 and the subsequent imperial wars of oppression in Afghanistan and Iraq. While Amis says he regretted his racist anti Islamic slurs shortly after saying them (IIRC in the Grauniad obit) actually his racism was pretty constant. He, Hitch, Dawkins and other English men of his generation wrote op Edâs from a perspective which did not deserve to be boosted. It ended up essentially supporting racist, imperialist wars unchallenged.
I think that the shout of âstay in your laneâ is often used to avoid critical perspectives from other fields (no I wonât stay in my lane computer scientists when we are arguing over AI - there is so, so much you donât know about it using your narrow lens) but one field we donât need the perspective of, on everything, is rich white male novelists. Iâm thinking also of Ian McEwenâs lengthy, wordy, essays on geopolitics back then and John Harrison and China Mievilleâs response to McEwens critique of SF and âgenre fictionâ -
âAs M John Harrison, another of MiĂ©villeâs literary heroes, recently wrote in his blog, âThe sooner literary fiction recognises and accepts its generic identity, the sooner it can get help.â MiĂ©ville heartily concurs: âI love genres; I think they are fascinating. My issue with litfic is not that it is a genre but that (a) it doesnât think it is and (b) it thinks itâs ipso facto better than all the ones that are genres. Literary fiction of that ilk â insular, socially and psychologically hermetic, neurotically backslapping and self-congratulatory about a certain milieu, disaggregated from any estrangement or rubbing of aesthetics against the grain â is in poor shape.â MiĂ©ville identifies Ian McEwanâs Saturday, set around the 2003 demonstration against the Iraq war, as a âparadigmatic moment in the social crisis of litficâ.
âIn the early 2000s there was this incredible efflorescence of anger and excitement . . . It seemed to me that Saturday quite bolshily said, 'OK, you accuse us of a neurotic obsession with insularity and a certain milieu. Iâm going to take the most extraordinary political event that has happened in Britain for however many years and I am going to doggedly interiorise it and depoliticise it with a certain type of limpid prose . . . It was a combative novel that met that sense of there being a crisis and de-crisised it through its absolute fidelity to a set of generic tropes.â
While the personal is certainly political, for the privileged litfic writer the political is only personal.
Which is why even when I agree with Martin Amis (say in his critique of the restoration of upper class to acceptance and fawning love in modern films and TV I half read this morning - you might not be able to get past his comparison of being unable to leave a movie early because he was with Rushdie with Iranian torture but I enjoyed some of the rest)
I donât see Amis as being capable of solidarity and I donât see him as having been capable of being a good ally to any progressive movement.
Yeah, I think that gets at some of my own discomfort about the fawning praise aimed at Amis⊠Thanks!
No worries 
Rest in Piss
Came here to post the same.
The world is a little bit duller now 
Indeed.
Once ran into her. She was visiting a Gunther van Hagens exhibition. They closed it down for her early, but I was still in when she entered. Nice lady. Was surprised about her size - I was under the impression she would have been taller. But she had enough charisma to fill the room.
