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Eliot Weinberger

William Heyward reviews 'Wildlife' by Eliot Weinberger

William Heyward
Thursday, 24 May 2012

As is often the case with brilliant writers, an Eliot Weinberger sentence cannot be mistaken for that of anyone else. There is his insistence upon concrete details: ‘It was recorded in the 12th century, in the Collected Stories of Anomalies, that Chang T’ien-hsi dreamed that a green dog with a long body came from the south and tried to bite him.’ Even when entering the realm of the absurd, he avoids abstraction: ‘Each year, in the village of Pullipudupet, in southern India, a very young girl is selected to marry a frog.’ His adjectives and nouns have a rhythmic weight: ‘Camels’ feet leave lotus-pad prints in the sand.’ His conjunctions attest to the peculiarity of the world: ‘Naked mole-rats have no fur, but their lips are hairy.’

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Published in June 2012, no. 342