The Economist chastises the American right

Not ususally a fount of invective against right-wing thinking, The Economist is nonetheless a newspaper of considered opinions, and the following piece enlivened my ride to work with its mild-mannered obliteration of everything that the Amercia right is doing at present.

Take a listen. I think you'll find it illuminating and amusing in equal measures.

I just love the way that the two rather posh English chaps egg each other on until they come to a set of quite devastating conclusions.

Joseph O'Neill's Netherland: A Novel

After a strong start I found that this novel, which was lauded to the skies on its appearance a few years ago, begins to flag. My main problem here is the central character, Hans von den Broek, whose obscene wealth means that he has the kind of existential problems that only afflict the very rich: does my beautiful successful wife love me enough? What is the final meaning of this diamond-encrusted vacuum?

If there were any kind of ironic distance inside the narrative, this would not be a problem, but O'Neill appears to tell it pretty straight. Maybe this is what we should expect of a pragmatic Hollander, but with the weight of his self-searching ennui upon us, it would sometimes be a relief to get outside his head.

Hans is if course a sort of cipher for modern man and the dissolution of the American dream in the wake of 9/11, but it's hard to feel too much sympathy for someone who rents an apartment in the Chelsea Hotel for $6,000 a month and flies to London fortnightly for family visits. Correction: it should be possible for a good writer to either ironise or emotionalise the protagonist's situation effectively regardless of income or situation, but O'Neill's method produces a central character who is curiously flat, curiously incapable of anything but the shallowest feelings. Maybe that's intentional, but a writer like Evelyn Waugh or even Don DeLillo would have made more of it.

Overall a good read but not a great book.