Dave – Page 573 – Dave Briggs

Big interview with Frank Rijkaard

February 19, 2005

From the Guardian today:

“I try to stay in the moment,” Frank Rijkaard says quietly as he studies the thick cloud of smoke hanging over his head. “Whether the moment is one of joy or difficulty or just sitting here right now, in my office, talking to you, I always think it’s best to stay in the moment. You know what I mean?”

Rijkaard takes a big drag, sucking the smoke deep into his lungs, staring quizzically at me through narrowed eyes. He exudes the kind of cool nonchalance that makes you wonder if he’s making a profound existential point or simply relishing his latest fag in the long chain he lights in his dingy office in the bowels of Camp Nou. He’s smart enough to do both.

Guardian Unlimited Football | News | Big interview with Frank Rijkaard

Kazuo Ishiguro

February 19, 2005

The Guardian profile Kazuo Ishiguro today.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s early career set a modern benchmark for precocious literary success. Born in 1954, in 1982 he won the Winifred Holtby award for the best expression of a sense of place, for his debut novel A Pale View of Hills . In 1983, he was included in the seminal Granta best of young British writers list, alongside Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, Graham Swift, Rose Tremain and Pat Barker. Three years later his second novel, An Artist of the Floating World, picked up the Whitbread book of the year and in 1989 his third, The Remains of the Day, won the Booker. David Lodge, chair of the judges, praised the depiction of a between-the-wars country-house butler’s self-deception as a “cunningly structured and beautifully paced performance”, which succeeds in rendering with “humour and pathos a memorable character and explores the large, vexed theme of class, tradition and duty”. At 34, Ishiguro’s place in the literary firmament was already secure and he felt as if he’d only just begun.

Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Profile: Kazuo Ishiguro