Haggling with Chronos
We all know those moments of hiatus; waiting for a computer to load, standing at a crowded bar, watching the digital clock on a station board. In these periods of impatient inertia you know you’re a creature of time: Chronos has his thumb on the scale of your soul. George Orwell, fighting in the Spanish Civil War, was constantly exasperated by Spain’s cavalier attitude to timekeeping. ‘In theory,’ he wrote, ‘I rather admire the Spaniards for not sharing our time neurosis; but unfortunately I share it myself.’
Max Dunbar reviews Eva Hoffman‘s Time.