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"Hill House": Haunted by What Might Have Been

The great nonsense of cultural relativism has been superseded by personal relativism. Values are now relative to each person. Shirley...

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"Stolen Focus": Part One

On Johann Hari's book Stolen Focus, and how a digital detox can clear up mental clutter. Read part two here. Art Of Conversation has...

The Cost of Greatness

On Damien Chazelle's Whiplash and Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, and what both can tell us about what some will sacrifice to...

On Living and Dying Well

What the shared life – and death – of volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft can teach us about a "timely death". Humans have achieved...

"The Midnight Club": Perfection as the enemy of the Good

On Mike Flanagan's new series and the nihilism of insisting people are perfect as they are. In Mike Flanagan’s latest Netflix offering,...

Unseen Terror: On uncertainty and fear

On terror vs horror, the stories of Stephen King, and dancing with death. If there’s one thing (though I’m sure there are many) that...

Do Facts Matter in Fiction?

On objective facts, subjective experience, and whether authenticity is more useful than truth in art. “Kind reader, with keen judgment...