2008-03-15 The more things change . . ..

Many of Duncan's favourite themes - there's always that lost love, always the edge of kinkiness. Some of the most memorable and beautiful phrases in his career - Pasha 'sails his archipelago of kips', and his libidinal flag will still flutter in the right oestral breeze (or something like that). Vividly visual, and so observant, so clever ('a Radio 4-style self-congratulatory side-stepping of the obvious'). Excellent as always in conveying that peculiar ease of a good friendship. Also on the way our own egos and libidos distort our perceptions of cities, deities, activities, objects, motivating us in strange and exhilarating ways which are then lost, in a moment's Gestalt switch, forever. Anything pursued to escape the self leads back to the self. A gimlet, but forgiving, eye cast upon his parents: the way siblings all drift from mother because they have all irrevocably realised she cultivates an ugly self-pity, an apathy. The 'flotsam' of family memories. And, perhaps most importantly, being Anglo-Indian: you can really begin to flesh out that niche, sense all the boundaries of that difference. As usual - but differently - it's bleddy good.