When my grandmother (also a November baby) told me I would receive her diaries when she passed, I was haunted by the idea of holding her former selves and secrets. Now, as I find myself in that vast stretch between youthful optimism and seniority, I’ve started to recognize that my grandmother’s “sharing” is an intimate act that goes beyond its recent digital connotation: posting. However, for me, the two terms have become interchangeable.
In what may be a major archaeological breakthrough, an independent researcher has suggested that the earliest writing in human history has been hiding in plain sight in prehistoric cave paintings in Europe, a discovery that would push the timeline of written language back by tens of thousands of years, reports a new study.
Hundreds of European caves are decorated with mesmerizing paintings of animals and other figures that were made by our species between roughly 15,000 and 40,000 years ago, during the Palaeolithic Age when humans were still hunter-gatherers. These cave paintings often include non-figurative markings, such as dots and lines, that have evaded explanation for decades.
This is a short book, but it carries a punch, as does its subject, the exclamation mark – or shriek, or bang, as it is occasionally and graphically called. I use the word ‘graphically’ advisedly, for the punctuation mark falls into an ambiguous territory overlapping orthography and illustration. I say to myself that I don’t like it, but I do on occasion. I recently used it to describe the noise of my horrible doorbell (‘BZZZT!’) to convey the sensation of panic that occurs when I hear it. I also love it when the speech bubble above a cartoon character’s head contains nothing but an exclamation mark: pure surprise. My favourite example is in Snoopy’s case, for often his ears also stand up like exclamation marks themselves.
But we have not always known how to use it. According to Florence Hazrat, the author of An Admirable Point, it took us a while to get a handle on it – as if it knew what it was about all along and we were just slow to catch up with it.
This charming self-help book is broken down into 12 seasonally appropriate themes. January is for future-facing resolutions. March is for spring cleaning – mental as well as physical. September is about re-engaging with work, perhaps seeing it differently it after a break. The guiding principle is that clinical psychology isn’t just for fixing dysfunctional situations; you can also use it to improve functional ones. If you feel a bit off-kilter but not quite bad enough to spend hundreds of pounds on therapy, Maddox’s tips and tricks from the consulting room could be for you. Not only do the book’s modest claims make it likable, but the fact that it isn’t trying to sell you some pumped-up, perfect version of yourself has the effect of making it seem trustworthy too.
All his life, Joseph Roth preferred to write in public. He was a familiar sight in cafes and hotel lobbies across most of continental Europe, including Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Prague and Marseilles. “Aside from being unable to bear loneliness, being surrounded by life stimulated him,” writes Keiron Pim in his absorbing new biography of Roth, “Endless Flight.” Whether dashing off his latest journalistic dispatch or drinking himself to within a nanometer of liver collapse, Roth, one suspects, was only ever happy when surrounded by waiters, bartenders, porters, maids and concierges. A self-declared Hotelpatriot, he was constitutionally averse to domesticity. “I hate houses,” he once wrote to a friend.