THE WEEK THAT WAS (30/07-03/08/2012)
This week bore witness to the passing of Gore Vidal. I commemorated this sad occasion by reposting the fragments I had already written on Vidal, and selecting the best bits from the obituaries featured in the Anglo-American press. In the end, I wrote a column for Slate, on why the best of Vidal is to be found in his novels, including Julian, Myra Breckinridge, and Lincoln.
Also this week Mitt Romney left the United States and in doing so: offended the British with his analysis that our houses are small and we don’t manufacture anything of worth; gave us a sneak peak at what his foreign policy might look like if he were elected; and, said at a fundraiser that ‘culture’ and not the occupation was the key to Palestinian economic failure.
Elsewhere: the Olympics began with much whizzbang and fuzzbox; 81pc of world Jewry now lives in Israel and the United States; Amos Oz on the place of fiction and the writer in Israel; and, James Taylor sang “The Water is Wide”.
