One of many clever and insightful passages (on Don Quixote) from Burning Down the House, Charles Baxter's 1998 collection of essays.

"...one can understand why, when Don Quixote is dying and has regained his lucidity, Sancho Panza wants him to be his old self again: heroic and mad and epical. Living by himself, Sancho is going to be stuck with a paunch and a world of mute things. So much the worse for him, but he has survived, in the way that laboratory science has survived its unruly spirit-obsessed parent, alchemy, and for some of the same reasons. Marxism survives Hegelianism until something turns up to replace dialectical materialism. Everyone remembers Sancho Panza's tears at the deathbed of Don Quixote. Materialism without ideals, mad or not, weeps. Deprived of a quest, it is consigned to centuries of weeping."

Taipei

Reviewed Tao Lin's Taipei for the National.

Also reading EM Forster's Aspects of the Novel, the Art of Fiction (David Lodge), Rabbit is Rich, Perfect Spy, Susanna Jones's When Nights Were Cold, Catherine O'Flynn's Mr Lynch's Holiday & What Was Lost, James Wood's How Fiction Works, Umberto Eco's Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, Eudora Welty's On Writing, Pride and Prejudice, Charles Baxter's Burning Down the House (which is incredible).

Shot a little video of the Tate's project space exhibition, probably best viewed via YouTube. The editors used library music, I'm guessing.

Reviewed Benoit Maire at David Roberts Art Foundation.

All That Is

Reviewed James Salter's All That Is for the Independent on Sunday.

Also reading Infinite Jest, Eeeee Eee Eeee, Taipei, Less than Zero, Madame Bovary, Zadie Smith's essays, Margaret Atwood's Negotiating with the Dead.

Bishop/Wentworth

Reviewed Steve Bishop and Richard Wentworth for Modern Painters.

A piece on programming exhibitions for Museums Journal's May edition.

I did a lecture for the Kingston MA students on review writing. It's here (as a compressed movie file).

From Monday I'm going to be working with Louise Blouin Media as a consultant, working across Artinfo.com, Modern Painters and Art + Auction.

Reading Tinker Tailor, Even the Dogs, Rabbit Redux, Sixty Stories, Penguin's Nietzsche reader.

Delicate truth

Reviewed the new Le Carré for the Independent.

Reviewed Red Joan for The National in Abu Dhabi.

Also reading Sense and Sensibility, HHhH, Airships/Ray, Tender is the Night, New York Trilogy.

From the summer I'll be taking over a monthly round-up column of London exhibitions for Modern Painters.

Now have PDFs of reviews of Antony Gormley at White Cube, Jannis Kounellis at Parasol Unit and Sachin Kaeley at Seventeen Gallery.

Also got a piece behind this paywall on impact vs collections in museums.

I've been workshopping some short stories at Birkbeck, on one of their short courses.