Great to finally see Watterson back on the horse after Calvin and Hobbes. A fantastic little fable. Loved the art and the story. Hopefully it won't taGreat to finally see Watterson back on the horse after Calvin and Hobbes. A fantastic little fable. Loved the art and the story. Hopefully it won't take him another 30 years to follow this up with a Jazz record, a contemporary art exhibition, or a performance piece at the MoMA....more
"We are making a bridge," he explained..."A bridge between the naïve and the sentimental. Between the intellect and the body." - John Le Carré, What Ri"We are making a bridge," he explained..."A bridge between the naïve and the sentimental. Between the intellect and the body." - John Le Carré, What Ritual Is Being Observed Tonight?
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In 1968, Le Carré, after taking a break from the British Secret Service, and after publishing his fifth novel, A Small Town in Germany went to Oxford and later taught at Eton. There he wrote, and published a story of love missed, and found again. Oh, and French wine. It is a bit over-the-top, but should, as the above quote hints, be associated with his 6th book, The Naïve and Sentimental Lover: A Novel.
I think for this story and the later, similarly styled novel, we readers should be grateful, because it sent Le Carré back from his brief romance with romance back to espionage. And, thus, it all worked out in the end....more
"No one is free", his wife replied, "when duty is involved." - John Le Carré
This is a short story that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, 28 Januar"No one is free", his wife replied, "when duty is involved." - John Le Carré
This is a short story that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, 28 January 1967. Essentially, it tells the tale of a family split between East Germany and West Germany. The father dies and wishes to be buried in the West.
I once had a friend whose father died in Arizona and wanted to be buried 630 miles away in Pleasant Grove, UT. Flying the casket with his father was too prohibitive, and there was a lot of red tape involved with driving. So, my friend bypassed the red tape, loaded the casket with his 90-year-old father in the back of his short-bed truck and headed to Utah. He drove his father through National Forests, National Parks, and had one last, slightly irregular road trip with his father. This story felt like that, just darker. The cold war was a cold mother, er, father....more
"Like the Nile she inundates and then brings forth a harvest of burgeoning vivaciousness. Metamorphic, yet she overcomes the changes through histrioni"Like the Nile she inundates and then brings forth a harvest of burgeoning vivaciousness. Metamorphic, yet she overcomes the changes through histrionic genius. She acts and is, and who can tell what in her is not theatrical?" - Harold Bloom, Cleopatra
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It was hard for me to get excited about Cleopatra or Bloom from this book. Not the worst piece in the series, but not the best (Falstaff). It was weak for the first 2/3 and finished a bit stronger. Like some other of the mediocre titles in this series, it feels like parts of the book were recycled, parts were put together by an RA phoning it in, and occasionally Bloom, his sharp focus dulling, would insert something new. Nothing revelatory here. Lots of diving for some mediocre pearls.
This is the second of the five books Bloom wrote directly about Shakespeare's big personalities. These are the books in his series Shakespeare's Personalities:
"And our children's vanishing encounters with nature represent a loss of primary experience." - Robert MacFarlane, Landmarks
"If children abandon 'the s"And our children's vanishing encounters with nature represent a loss of primary experience." - Robert MacFarlane, Landmarks
"If children abandon 'the sandlots and creek beds, the alleys and woodlands', if 'children are not permitted...to be adventurers and explorers as children', then 'what will become of the world of adventure, stories, of literature itself?'" - Michael Chabon, The Wilderness of Childhood
"I was reminded, too, of Emerson's beautiful description of language as 'a city to the building of which every person has brought a stone.'" - Emerson, quoted by Robert MacFarlane, Landmarks
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Inspired by the removal of several nature words in the Oxford Junior Dictionary: "acorn, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup..." The list was tragic. The thesis of Robert Macfarlane's book is we love the things we name, and if we lose the name for things in our language, our ability to care for nature and wilderness diminished. This book is a signpost pointing to books where the language of nature is strong. Chapters are essentially essays where Robert Macfarlane is able to sing a love letter to fantastic books like Nan Shepherd's In the Cairngorms, Roger Deakon's Waterlog: A Swimmer's Journey Through Britain, J.A. Baker's The Peregrine, Richard Skelton's Landings, Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams, Richard Jefferies' Nature Near London, Clarince Ellis's The Pebbles On The Beach, and John Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra.
Macfarlane's love for these books and topics is so rich it is hard to not love them back. I finished this book and purchased three more. It was infective. Just like the glossaries that divide the chapters. In the glossary, Macfarlane include nature words in danger of being lost. The words mostly are focused on Great Britain, but when this book was first published it inspired readers to send in their own local lexicons of nature. It really is beautifully constructed and for a book organic, which structurally is nearly perfect....more
"I am the vestal priestess of a secret I have forgotten. And I serve the forgotten danger. I found something I could not understand, my lips were seal"I am the vestal priestess of a secret I have forgotten. And I serve the forgotten danger. I found something I could not understand, my lips were sealed, and all I've got are incomprehensible fragments of a ritual." - Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.
As GH awoke one morning from dry, salty dreams she found her self confronted by an empty room and a barata.
It is hard to review this book without giving away the story. It isn't a story really. It's an experience. Its like trying to summarize a deeply-felt dream, a mushroom trip, licking a Sonoran desert toad. It is religious. It is soulful. It is crisp and fresh. For something that takes place over a day, it feels like a firehose of information has flowed from the author to her readers. Full-stop. Few books have impacted me like this novel did. It felt a bit like Djuna Barnes meeting Franz Kafka, or James Joyce swimming with Gertrude Stein....more
"He'd always said the plan called for two people, one on the waiting end, one on the dying end." - Elliot Chaze, Black Wings Has My Angel
"The ultimate "He'd always said the plan called for two people, one on the waiting end, one on the dying end." - Elliot Chaze, Black Wings Has My Angel
"The ultimate in horror is, for some unworldly reason, attractive. Hypnotic." - Elliot Chaze, Black Wings Has My Angel
When I started this novel my wife started to laugh. She reminded me that in Home Alone and Home Alone 2, the hardboiled, mobster movies used throughout the films are: Angels with Filthy Souls and Angels with Even Filthier Souls, respectably. Perfection.
Wow! I came to Chaze loving Jim Thompson, James M. Cain], Raymond Chandler & Dashiell Hammett already, having consumed most all of their books. Black Wings Has My Angel deserves to stand with all of these. The novel hits hard, flows well, and is almost hypnotic in parts. It explores the pull of love, of our past, and of money of course. The ending feels almost like reading a Cormac McCarthy novel....more
"Despite all claims the Corporation of the Blood of the Lamb makes to be a divinely inspired Church, it seems oddly as eager as any worldly institutio"Despite all claims the Corporation of the Blood of the Lamb makes to be a divinely inspired Church, it seems oddly as eager as any worldly institution to soil its hands in a little impropriety, to cover a few things over if that means furthering the cause of righteousness." - Brian Evenson, Father of Lies
Not Evenson's best, but definitely his angriest. This book might be the equivalent to reading just the darkest bits of Blood Meridian. It will seed a forest of nightmares all with hanging children of God.
It needs to come with a warning label, a retch bucket and a lap to cry on. I have to put it down every 10 pages and just pray into the abyss for my soul (not really, but you got to do something to keep from sliding into this nightmare. Imagine being forced into the mind of an evil man, protected by a fundamentalist kafkaucracy, interested only in protecting its "good" name rather than its children. I'm not sure of you -- but I can think of examples in Texas, Ireland, Boston, Arkansas, Utah, Idaho.
This was written right after Brian was kicked out of BYU for the same book of short stories that got him hired there in the first place.* Talk about a literary hat trick. Brian wrote this book post that period. It is a blood-letting. It goes into an angry place and like Clockwork Orange's Aversion Therapy Scene forces you to observe things most people would want to turn away from. But sometimes shades and shadows tell the truth, sometimes lights on a hill are not designed to guide or inform but rather obfuscate.
* Note: I bought a copy of Altmann's Tongue: Stories and a Novella from the BYU Bookstore (back in the day when that bookstore rocked and didn't just sell trinkets and ice cream). I'm solidly team Evenson here....more
Principles do not constrain creativity: rather they inspire diverse and imaginative echoes of seeds, vines, leaves, flowers and fruit. A designer who Principles do not constrain creativity: rather they inspire diverse and imaginative echoes of seeds, vines, leaves, flowers and fruit. A designer who works with repetition, alternation, undulation, tessellation, spirals, and symmetry soon discovers the rich variety made possible by working with these simple generative processes. - Lisa DeLong, Curves
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There is a space where geometry, math, art all meet. Lisa DeLong rules that universe (S( or at least one or two of the major curves of that universe )S).
I love mosaics, Islamic art, geometry, math, and literature. So I'm glad I discovered Lisa's art a few years back, and equally glad I discovered this little book. It describes, technically, the Curves used in decorative arts, but like the Yin Yang and the Tree of Life, this type of art expands up to the universe and drives down to electrons spinning.
God, I imagine, is constantly drawing ellipses with his finger across the arches and domes of a spiraling Universe. And Lisa is here with us to pull out a brass compass and draw them, and describe the whole process....more
“Scratch a professor and you find a paranoiac, Barlow thought. But scratch a dean and you find a con artist.” ― Paul La Farge, The Night Ocean
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OK“Scratch a professor and you find a paranoiac, Barlow thought. But scratch a dean and you find a con artist.” ― Paul La Farge, The Night Ocean
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OK, things I loved: Tales within tales folded inside tales. Lies wrapped in lies buried under lies. Love covering love uncovering lost love. Middle sagged. Ending was great. An interesting premise. The ability to flip the narrative and begin again was great. What can you expect in a book filled with Futurists and ardent fans of SciFi in the 40s and 50s?
But still the book only floats between 3 and 4 stars. No tide. Absolutely no rip tide. There is a plot, it may be shaped like an Ouroboros, but never the less, it is there, it persists like a bad, but not very scary dream. The movement has little energy to it. It slides forward and backward, up and down.
Anyway, I don't want to knock it too hard. I did read it. A lot of the secondary characters (HP Lovecraft, Pohl, etc) stole the show from the prime non-movers.
Oh, but the Amanda Dewey cover and design absolutely kicks ass....more
"Believe me, colonel, I'm not an atheist. I get just as upset thinking God exists as thinking he doesn't. That is why I'd rather not think about it." -"Believe me, colonel, I'm not an atheist. I get just as upset thinking God exists as thinking he doesn't. That is why I'd rather not think about it." - Gabrielle García Márquez, Leaf Storm
This book contains the novella "The Leaf Storm" along with the following stories:
1. - The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World - ★★★★★ 2. - A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings - ★★★★★ 3. - Blacaman the Good, Vendor of Mircacles - ★★★★ 4. - The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship - ★★★★ 5. - Monologue of Isabel Watching it Rain in Macondo - ★★★★★ 6. - Nabo - ★★★★
I need to come back and talk a bit more about it, but not now....more
"Eternity wasn't just time, but something like the deeply rooted certainty that she couldn't contain it in her body because of death; the impossibilit"Eternity wasn't just time, but something like the deeply rooted certainty that she couldn't contain it in her body because of death; the impossibility of going beyond eternity was eternity; and a feeling in absolute almost abstract purity was also eternity." - Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart
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It is hard to put your finger on, wrap your brain around, this novel. In someways it reminds me of (and stands with) the stream of conscious writers like Joyce and Woolf. But the novel itself FEELS like Djuna Barnes' classic Nightwood. It is mysterious, lyrical, fragmented, dreamy. At heart, it feels like a brilliant, introspective girl/woman (Lispector was 23 when this book was published) working out what it means to be human, but more specifically, a woman; independent of her parents, relatives, teachers, husband, lovers, other women, motherhood, and even God.
Using philosophy, geometry, poetry, nature and intuition she examines herself from a period to a line to a triangle to a circle, and then back again. She explores the shape of herself and what it means to be alive....more
"Something in us dies with MacBeth: call it ambition or the iniquity of an imagination that does not know how to stop." - Harold Bloom, MacBeth: A Dag"Something in us dies with MacBeth: call it ambition or the iniquity of an imagination that does not know how to stop." - Harold Bloom, MacBeth: A Dagger of the Mind
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This is the last of the five books Bloom wrote directly about Shakespeare's big personalities. He wrote five books in his series Shakespeare's Personalities:
I've now read 3/5 and should finish the last two in a few months. In many ways this seems like something Bloom may have intended to write more of. I can't see these as being the only worthy personalities in Shakespeare, but time is fickle, the grave beckons, and Bloom was definitely a man of letters and varied interests.
Jumping back into this series, they also seems a bit weak on Bloom's analysis. There are some charming turns of phrases and some unique insight, but a large section of this small book is basically just defining terms or phrases, giving some background, and quoting the Bard a lot. Which is basically the framework of any good commentary, just not a GREAT commentaries. I'll finish the last two because they don't cost much in time, they are interesting (I didn't feel my time was wasted), and I'm a sucker for completing something I start....more
"He dared to think and believe what other brave men would have shrunk from contemplating. He He was an adventurer in the intellectual and the spiritua"He dared to think and believe what other brave men would have shrunk from contemplating. He He was an adventurer in the intellectual and the spiritual as well as the physical world and it was this combination of interests, actively followed, which made him unique, one of the rarest personalities ever seen on earth." - Byron Farwell, Burton: A Biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton
While not an academic, it is hard not to think of him as a professional historian. Over a 40 year period he published 14 books, mostly focused on the Victorian period of exploration and war, mostly published by Norton and Viking.
The book isn't a hagiography. Burton had many faults, many short-comings, many quirks and Farwell highlights those as well as his brilliance and bravery. I can't give it my highest ratings for biographies simply because while I adore both Burton and Farwell, this isn't up to the level of Robert A Caro, Edmund Morris, or say David W. Blight. It was really good, just not great. The narrative drive of the book is sidetracked by Burton himself who jumps from place to place, ship to ship, idea to idea.
That said, it is a fantastic start to exploring Burton's character and to gain insight into England during its Victorian period in Africa, South America, and the Middle East. Points should also be given to not ignoring Burton's wife and her role in Burton's life....more
Whenever there is a disaster of epic proportions, something so grand it adjusts the way we look at the world (think Greeks and volcanos, other civilizWhenever there is a disaster of epic proportions, something so grand it adjusts the way we look at the world (think Greeks and volcanos, other civilizations with fires, floods, famines) a myth often gets created to explain it. Gods were made. Stories were told. We need to make sense of the world and grand myths give us structure.
The 20th century, with its world wars and the emergence of quantum mechanics and the atomic age, created a huge disruption. The gods that came out of the 20th century were mathematicians and physicists (at least for a while) and we developed myths about them. Certainly, they were real men, with real passions; real flesh and blood, but they were our rock stars, our saviors, a ultimately, perhaps, our destroyers.
The use of fiction mingled with nonfiction isn't new. We have seen it several times with Norman Mailer, Hilary Mantel, Truman Capote, etc. We see it all the time with movies (Based on a true story). But often, when we mix fiction and nonfiction, it causes some heartburn in those who crave certainty. The problem is we live in an age of uncertainty. We have deconstructed the atom and history. Even those histories that seem rigorous and scholarly, can also be perceived as works of fiction. Just like an electron can take an infinite number of paths between two points, so too can a historian when writing about a grand figure of history. Gaps are filled. Assumptions are made. Things are included and excluded. The record is only so available. The reader either fills in what she wants or the author, in sketching a line between points ,makes an assumption about a path.
What Labatut has done here is explicitly been creative in those gaps. He's ventured into an almost mythic and surreal darkness and come out with a story that seems born as much as written. These stories weave a fabric together with fact and fiction and the pattern is dark, but also illuminates....more
“It would be a dreadful thing to tell anyone about it, for it would destroy some fragile structure of truth. It was truth that might be shattered by d“It would be a dreadful thing to tell anyone about it, for it would destroy some fragile structure of truth. It was truth that might be shattered by division.” ― John Steinbeck, The Red Pony
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A episodic novella that collects four (or sometimes five) short stories written in the 30s. Each of the stories' protagonist is a young boy named Jody, centered on his family's ranch near Salina, California. The novel is pastoral and full of the dreams and emotions of a young boy learning about life, death, fragility and disappointment. Loved the stories. Steinbeck is a master of the simple story that lovingly explores one or more characters.
"The Gift" was first published in the November 1933 issue of North American Review.
"The Great Mountains" was first published in the December 1933 issue of North American Review.
"The Promise" was first published in the October 1937 issue of Harper's Monthly.
"The Leader of the People" was first published in the August 1936 issue of Argosy.
The edition I read (Penguin) didn't have the story "Junius Maltby" that was part of an earlier book of Steinbeck entitled The Pastures of Heaven....more
“There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether he is “There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether he is doing right or wrong.” - John Steinbeck, The Moon is Down
"The moon is down; I have not heard the clock." Shakespeare, Act II, Scene i of Macbeth
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I've been on a Steinbeck kick the last month. This is my fourth. I read a couple novellas and a nonfiction. This is one I knew very little about. I heard it was popular in Europe and the Soviet Union during the war and I'm still not sure if it was written at the request of any government or individual, but as a piece of literary propaganda it works out really well.
It is essentially the story of a village in an unnamed country (read Norway) that is invaded by another country (read Germany) and begins to initiate resistance to occupation. It was made into a play in 1942 (not great reviews) and later a film in 1943.
Not a perfect novel, but I think the thing that keeps bringing me back to Steinbeck is this generalization, while I think other writers (see Faulkner) are technically better writers, I get fed really well whenever I read Steinbeck. There is just something about his outlook, his moral philosophy, his vibe that I really roll with....more
"It’s not a mystery; it’s just the past.” - Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park
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I remember watching the William Hurt film adapted from this book in th"It’s not a mystery; it’s just the past.” - Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park
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I remember watching the William Hurt film adapted from this book in the early 80s. Great movie. Great book. The 80s had some absolute bangers for Cold War espionage/crime novels. I love this genre. It isn't an espionage thriller. It is basically a police procedural, but set on a different axis than New York (although this does have a NYC angle), Chicago, or Los Angeles. Some of the great that exist in this space, for my money are:
Olen Steinhauer's early crime novels (the Yalta Blvd Sequence) set a Soviet Era state that is basically a combination of Hungary and Romania:
Some of LeCarre's novels float a bit in this direction, but not absolutely. None of these authors reach LeCarre's best, but all three manage to hit close to his average with their best, if that makes sense.
Anyway, the idea is the same with these three authors. You are dealing with hard-boiled, crime fiction set in an alien/totalitarian landscape with sympathetic characters. The main detective is always sympathetic and manages to get the job done despite the restraints imposed by his system. One of the refreshing things about this is it allows a reader to reframe American Crime fiction and ask, how does our system also create an atmosphere that prevents crime from being resolved. One of the best authors who tackles this type of situation, for my money is Don Winslow.
This Cruz novel is the first of 10 Arkady Renko novels. So, Renko must be a cat+1....more
"It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again." - John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez
[image]"It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again." - John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez
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This book was originally the idea of Steinbeck and his marine biologist/muse Ed Ricketts. They traveled from Monterey, CA down to Baja and collected flora and fauna throughout the Sea of Cortez (see Gulf of California). This is right before WWII started for the US and about 1.5 years before Japan pulled us into it, but the impending war is like a giant submerged whale that follows the Western Flyer down to Mexico and back.
It is told mostly in a first person, plural, supposedly the joint thoughts of Steinbeck and Ricketts, but mostly a narrative constructed by Steinbeck after reviewing his log/diary from the trip. The original book, Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research included the research and accounting of Ed Ricketts of all the items they collected. After Ed Ricketts died, his name was dropped as was the species catalogue. Steinbeck added a Eulogy for his dead friend, but the estate keep Rickett's name from the authorship.
I read this book as I drank Pain Killers and Margaritas in Puerto Penasco (Rocky Point), Mexico while recovering for a week after breaking a femur in May. It seemed an appropriate time to carefully place a toe back in the warm pool of Steinbeck's writing.
"With the same ulterior motive*, I could undertake to describe in capsule form the many writing projects that I have conceived and seriously planned a"With the same ulterior motive*, I could undertake to describe in capsule form the many writing projects that I have conceived and seriously planned across the years but have never written." - John McPhee, "Thorton Wilder at the Century," Tabula Rasa (Volume 1?)
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* When McPhee was young he went to a lunch with Thorton Wilder, when asked "Wilder said he was not actually writing a new play or novel but was fully engaged in a related project. He was cataloguing the plays of Lope de Vega. Lope de Vega wrote some eighteen hundred full-length plays. Four hundred and thirty-one survive. How long would it take to read four hundred and thirty-one plays? How long would it take to summarize each in descriptive detail and fulfill the additional requirements of cataloguing?"
***
Now in his early 90s, McPhee better understands: "I know that those four hundred and thirty-one plays were serving to extend Thornton Wilder’s life."
That is the purpose of this book. McPhee is, at the bidding of his wife, his daughter, or the inevitable tug of the eternities, going through his files: organizing, reminiscing, looking for gems, remembering adventures, friends. Bringing to light the hidden, the unpublished, the errata and errant pages and proposals.
He has been periodically adding these to the New Yorker: drip, drip, drip.
Tabula Rasa appeared 3 times from Jan 2020 to Feb 2022.
"Tabula Rasa: Vol 1" appeared in the New Yorker on Jan 12, 2020, and included the vignettes: 1. Trujillo 2. Thorton Wilder at the Century 3. The Moons of Methuselah 4. "Hitler Youth" 5. The Bridges of Christian Menn 6. The Airplane that Crashed in the Woods 7. On the Campus 8. The Guilt of the US Male 9. Extremadura
"Tabula Rasa: Vol 2" appeared in the New Yorker on Apr 19, 2021, and included the vignettes: 1. Sloop to Gibraltar 2. The Valley 3. December 19,1943 4. The Dutch Ship Tyger 5. Ray Brock 6. Writer
"Tabula Rasa: Vol 3" appeared in the New Yorker on Feb 7, 2022, and included the vignettes: 1. Not that One 2. Night Watchman 3. George Recker and Dr. Dick 4. Dinners with Henry Luce 5. Bourbon and Bing Cherries 6. Dropped Antaeus
These 21 small pieces represent a little less than 1/2: 21/50. Clearly, if you like what you read in the New Yorker, you still need to buy the book. Fair. I would hyperlink to the New Yorker articles, but unfortunately, 카지노싸이트 only allows one to link to things from inside africa-eu.com. Booo!
McPhee might be my favorite nonfiction writer, but while these pieces do present an interesting structure and allow the reader to get a bigger sense of a big writer, they are also cast-offs. Some parts are amazing, others are filler, and the structure seems more like a Smörgåsbord of memories, people, reflections, and almost taken paths. I enjoyed it, but these 50 pieces can't compete with McPhee's great books. This is Michael Jordan at 60 not the GOAT at 20-30....more
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