Reviews

The Reading Chair: Falling in Love with The Sirens of Titan

The Reading Chair: Falling in Love with The Sirens of Titan

…and the Joke That Explains Everything “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” Famous words by Malachi Constant, the man who gets rich by chance and ends up in space by chance, feels extraordinarily deeply...

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Fire: The Unforgiving Ironist

Fire: The Unforgiving Ironist

Writers have always feared and worshipped the most perilous ironist of all — the restless, consuming, and merciless fire. “It was a pleasure to burn.” Few first lines have scorched themselves so deeply into memory. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury gave us a world where...

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Sea: The Oldest Ironist

Sea: The Oldest Ironist

Aashisha traces writers' obsession with the oldest ironist of all — the boundless, beloved, and beautiful sea. The sea is a fascinating concept, not only because water makes up three-fourths of the planet as well as the human body (thanks, fourth-grade writer mind)...

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Lincoln in the Bardo and the Irony of the In-Between

Lincoln in the Bardo and the Irony of the In-Between

Aashisha revisits George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo and talks about the irony of indecision - how living between what was and what must be might be the truest form of being alive. Bardo is a Tibetan word for the liminal space between death and life. It is a...

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Rowing with Imagination – On Xenophon

Rowing with Imagination – On Xenophon

Nigel writes an encomium for the Cost of Glory... Twenty minutes on the rowing machine and the display will dutifully say I have rowed 3.7 kilometres. But that is not really where I am. In my mind, memories merge. I am rowing from Miletus on the Maeander to Lesbos....

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What The Remains of the Day Teaches About Life’s Ironies

What The Remains of the Day Teaches About Life’s Ironies

In The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro holds up a mirror to our own compromises— how much of life we trade away in the name of duty. “The evening’s the best part of the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.” I wish. To be...

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The Reading Chair Backstory : On Beauty by Zadie Smith

The Reading Chair Backstory : On Beauty by Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith has called On Beauty an “homage” to E.M. Forster’s Howards End, though not in a plot-by-plot sense. Zadie Smith has used Forster’s structure as “scaffolding” - as a way to learn to write an English novel, something that made her feel like she’d earned...

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The Reading Chair : On Beauty by Zadie Smith

The Reading Chair : On Beauty by Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith’s On Beauty is a novel about family, art, and class but mostly, it’s about the exquisite awkwardness of believing in ideas that no longer seem to work. “The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.” — On Beauty, Zadie Smith Have you ever...

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Author

  • Nigel Scotchmer

    Nigel’s peripatetic path in life gives him, he believes, a unique perspective on the world around him. He has worked at many occupations over the years from driving a truck, writing welding standards, to being an international salesman,\ accountant and business owner. Brought up in a family that believed that Antigone in the Greek myth was correct to stand up and die for her belief that fairness and truth were more important than the ranting raves of the unthinking mob – his father accepted the consequences of refusing to fire a homosexual in the 1950s – Nigel believes irony is the greatest tool for both encouraging equity and our enjoyment of life. Since irony involves the interplay between emotions, reality and chance, its appreciation can provide meaning to the often inexplicable world in which we live. He said, when interviewed for this summary: “No, we can’t all be heroes, and too often we make the wrong choice, for the wrong reasons – but at least irony can bring peace to us by helping reconcile the warring elements.” Nigel loves literature – especially books and poems that deal with universal themes such as love, war, and justice – and is now happily retired from the world of business. Ironically, (like countless retirees before him!), he says he has the ambition to be a great writer and is currently writing fiction full-time…. Visit him at https://nigelscotchmer.com/