Daniel Soar

2 months ago | lrb.co.uk | Daniel Soar |Michael Katz

It’s​ a big book, some say the best. Freud: ‘The Brothers Karamazov is the most magnificent novel ever written.’ Einstein: ‘The most wonderful thing I’ve ever laid my hands on’. All the modernists were fans. Woolf: ‘Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture. Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading.’ Faulkner reread it every year.

Jan 29, 2025 | lrb.co.uk | Daniel Soar

Iwish​ I’d been there. On the night of 28 November 1970, in front of the Duomo in Milan, a sheet of purple drapery was removed to reveal a ten-metre-high golden penis, with a pair of massive golden papier-mâché balls on the plinth at its base. When darkness fell, a firecracker went off, and then another, as sparks and smoke issued from the tip, with louder explosions following, rockets shooting out everywhere, until the whole thing was a tower of flames erupting into the sky.