by Nigel Scotchmer | Essays
Alfaaz means, simply, words. And words, read aloud and in good company, are the whole of what we’re after this month. On the evening of July 26, The Irony Club is opening the mic again, and this time we’re widening it considerably. It will run the way an open mic...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Essays
A missionary family raises four boys in one of Madrid’s most drug-ravaged neighbourhoods. Jonathan Tepper’s memoir traces an extraordinary journey. Jonathan Tepper’s Shooting Up is much more than the account of four brothers in a missionary family growing...
by Peter Scotchmer | Essays
This is the third essay by Peter as part of The Ironist’s continuing series of articles on language and literature. Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. Polonius: What is the matter, my lord? Hamlet: Between who? Polonius: I mean, the...
by Jonathan Bennett | Essays
First a bestseller and now a prestige television series, A Gentleman in Moscow invites us to believe that grace and civility might yet survive the twentieth century’s great undoing. Picture Credits: Amazon Some months ago, I read A Gentleman in Moscow during a...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Essays
A drive down from myth-haunted Mt. Parnassus into the passes, graveyards, and battlefields Picture Credits: Edward Dodwell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons It is said that Zeus, the great philanderer, lay with Mnemosyne (Memory), a Titan, for a marathon...
by Peter Scotchmer | Essays
This is the second essay by Peter on the intricacies of the English language. Here, he writes on where inspiration comes from, and why no amount of effort can quite summon it. My first piece in the English language series talked about the quality of writing that...
