“Sod the wine, I want to suck on the writing. This man White is an instinctive writer, bloody rare to find one who actually pulls it off, as in still gets a meaning across with concision. Sharp arbitrage of speed and risk, closest thing I can think of to Cicero’s ‘motus continuum animi.’

Probably takes a drink or two to connect like that: he literally paints his senses on the page.”


DBC Pierre (Vernon God Little, Ludmila’s Broken English, Lights Out In Wonderland ... Winner: Booker prize; Whitbread prize; Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman prize; James Joyce Award from the Literary & Historical Society of University College Dublin)


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27 November 2014

PHILLIP HUGHES


63no. This is hardly the time to attempt an explanation of Australia's love of cricket, but I expect that by now most countries that don't play this strange game have heard that one of its brightest young practitioners is dead after having his vertebral artery split by a freak ball. I thank Phillip Hughes for the way he influenced my enjoyment of countless drinks as I worked here at my desk, listening to the cricket on the radio. At his brightest, Hughdog, the son of banana farmers, made the most ordinary beer taste like great champagne. In those moments of his most human frailty, which were fewer as his mighty skill unfolded, he could make Dom taste like old beer. Few people have such magical power ... Deep bow with tears.

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