Jumping Through Hoops » kakania http://blog.jameshiggs.com James Higgs's Blog Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:46:42 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Two greats unexpectedly meet http://blog.jameshiggs.com/2008/01/09/two-greats-unexpectedly-meet/ http://blog.jameshiggs.com/2008/01/09/two-greats-unexpectedly-meet/#comments Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:52:51 +0000 higgis http://blog.jameshiggs.com/2008/01/09/two-greats-unexpectedly-meet/ One of my favourite books is Robert Musil‘s massive The Man Without Qualities. The other day, Shane pointed out that Eamonn Fitzgerald had written not only about that, but also about the utterly superb TV series The Wire, whose fifth series got under way in the states last week. By chance he embedded a video of one of my favourite scenes – McNulty and Bunk doing their CSI thing in the most anti-CSI way you can imagine.

These are two niche things, and two of my favourites. It’s a strange coincidence that someone should blog about these things on consecutive days. I’ve been thinking about re-reading The Man Without Qualities. Now I have to.

One small quibble: Kakania was so called in Musil’s novel because it was a disparaging way to refer to the Austo-Hungarian Dual Monarchy – a contraction of the words ‘Kaiserlich und Königlich‘ – ‘Imperial and Royal’. So the book is not ‘set in a country called Kakania’, but in Austo-Hungary.

Anyway, I recommend both greats unreservedly.

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