Dickens saw London with dirty eyes. Colored by the Industrial Revolution's residual grime, his vision was thick with haze and factory smoke. He portrayed London's hovels, its drinking dens and shipyards, lodging houses and debtors' prisons, with hard-won insight. The author crept through London's
Love and war may be huge themes, but Sebastian Faulks approaches them from a microscopic perspective. He detects love in the minute movements of a woman's fingers; in a man's manner of crawling through trenches, he captures fear and torment. Faulks is involved in a romance with detail, charging every
Many British directors have, by choice or necessity, turned to Hollywood. Filmmakers from Ridley Scott to Alan Parker and David Puttnam left their native land for the financing that would land their most ambitious visions on screen. Some might call this a sell-out, but it's arguable that some of thes
Radiohead's musical gestures are grand, even spacious, but they are neither airy nor light. Indeed, the space of this music is dense. Beneath the stupendous angst of their songs Radiohead creates a minute, complex texture, a flexible network of distortions and modulations. The band's angst turns in o