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The Marxist sentiments voiced in Blunt's art reviews and in his contribution to The Mind in Chains are banal. They constitute the widespread routine of anger of a middle-class generation caught up in the threefold context of Western economic deprivation, rising Fascism and Nazism, and what were b…

Throughout 1938, these stern hopes seemed to wither. The choice before the artist grew ever more stark. He could, wrote Blunt in his Spectator piece for June 24th, either discipline himself to paint the world as it was, paint something else as mere frivolous distraction, or commit suicide. [...]

It is notoriously difficult to make a strong case for the enduring vitality of criticism written for a weekly or monthly magazine. [...] of course we find, among other things, a variety of local insights or judgments that may seem to us, and often are, ephemeral. [...]

But then all worthwhile in…

I take your parents to the lighthouse, I do. There is nothing but September fog to cover our shame, and your father laughs just like you, at the opacity. I want to eat the laugh, I want to rub it on my chest like camphor, I want to make a sound tattoo. I also want to bash these two small people tog…

[...] The doctor says if you were so quote perfect for me unquote you'd probably still be around, no offense.