Wayne Brown on Patrick Manning's post-Ivan visit to Jamaica:

As for his peculiar gambit--flying for four hours from Trinidad, to spend exactly another four hours here--and be photographed standing, in long-sleeved white shirt and tie, frowning worriedly at a pile of debris a stone's throw from the harbour where, as an undergraduate at Mona, young Manning often used to cotch a sail with me on my very first sailing boat, Chiquita, 36 years ago--before getting back on the plane and flying for another four hours, back to Trinidad--well! You probably have to know both Mr Manning and Trinidadians' endemic bereavement at never having experienced a hurricane to understand that.

An aside in his J'ca Observer column on the desperate situation in Haiti.

I've been reading lots of reviews of Magic Seeds the last few days, but have been too lazy or too distracted to link to them. Jonathan apparently suffers from no such disabilities, & provides a neat roundup.

I've just got a copy of the book, though, & if laziness & distraction can be overcome I may read it this weekend, & may even post a few comments.

The physical and spiritual nullity Chandran encounters in his travels is captured in the sparseness of Naipaul’s language, which, in Magic Seeds is wiped clean to its bone. The restlessness and rage of his earlier work, so reminiscent of Joseph Conrad, has quietened into world-weariness, which is also sadly missing Naipaul’s early humour.

--From what is surely the first published review of V.S. Naipaul's new novel--by Anita Sethi in the Glasgow Sunday Herald.

Once upon a time, New York City had a Sixth Borough.