Colin Bower
Colin Bower’s core academic discipline is English literature; he was briefly a lecturer in English at UCT, and his work has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals. He has been a journalist (Sunday Times, Mail & Guardian), a corporate communications consultant, and a book publisher (Juta). He once served on the Sunday Times Alan Paton Literary Award panel. He has authored fiction and non-fiction work. His latest book, The End of Guilt, is published by The Tendagaroo Press.
Articles By This Author
Garth Zietsman and the case against scientism
I have to take issue with the contributions Garth Zietsman has recently made to the Daily Friend. That he seems incapable of formulating a single
It wasn’t me, your honour, it was my genome …
The following is a courtroom drama inspired by Garth Zietsman’s diagnosis of the civilizational problem of “genetic load”. Dramatis Personae (With a nod of acknowledgment
The death of tragedy … and the birth of happiness
Sixty-five years ago, George Steiner published his seminal work, The Death of Tragedy. Should so recondite a title command the attention of economists and politicians
Of Equalisers and Liberators
The political vocabulary we continue to use is not just redundant, it impairs our ability to make accurate political judgements, to assess political policies, and to chart a new political future.
Jaw jaw rather than war war
For godsakes can’t we lighten up a little bit? I am sick of wars, and oil barrels, and one dire strait after another. Instead let us sit upon the ground, as Richard II adjured us to do, and tell sad tales of hamburgers, restaurants and that bane of an otherwise happy life, tipping.
The tragedy of following leaders
Sixty million people were butchered, burnt, blown apart, starved or otherwise reduced to dust in the two great conflagrations of the 20th Century.
The meaning of meaning
Life is a search for meaning – the meaning of existence, for instance. But what chance do we have of ever answering the big questions
Thinking about thinking
Are we responsible for our own thoughts? For most people the intuitive answer will be “yes, of course we are, for if not, who or
Have a Shandy
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, an 18th century comic novel, read only by a few devoted aficionados of the bizarre, might seem
ARC error: why we should reject Peterson’s call to self-sacrifice
Bliss, wrote Wordsworth, was it in that dawn to be alive. It is similarly bliss to be alive in the time of the Trumpian cultural