Lesa's Book Critiques (Free subscription) | 05/11/2009
Today, I'd like to welcome guest blogger, Michael Atkinson. Michael is the author of a new book, Hemingway Deadlights . He says, "The story is set in 1956 Key West, and the post-Nobel Ernest Hemingway ropes himself into investigating the mysterious murder of a drinking buddy, a path that eventually leads him to Cuba and rum in the jungle with Castro and Guevera. (Book #2, coming in 2010, goes...
Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish... (Free subscription) | 04/11/2009
Chapter XIV: Benavente's Madrid_ All the gravel paths of the Plaza Santa Ana were encumbered with wicker chairs. At one corner seven blind musicians all in a row, with violins, a cello, guitars and a mournful cornet, toodled and wheezed and twiddled through the "Blue Danube." At another a crumpled old man, with a monkey dressed in red silk drawers on his shoulder, ground out "_la Paloma_"...
Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish... (Free subscription) | 04/11/2009
ROSINANTE TO THE ROAD AGAIN By John Dos Passos Copyright, 1922, George H. Doran Company, New York I: A Gesture and a Quest Telemachus had wandered so far in search of his father he had quite forgotten what he was looking for. He sat on a yellow plush bench in the café El Oro del Rhin, Plaza Santa Ana, Madrid, swabbing up with a bit of bread the last smudges of brown sauce off a plate of which...
2 Blowhards (Free subscription) | 21/10/2009
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Edward Craig, back in Michigan after bravely braving San Francisco's City Lights Bookstore and living to report his findings here, now unearths for us a surprising nugget of ... well, let him report: * * * * * Michael Blowhard often lamented on this site about the lack of appreciation for the writing skills of popular novelists. These novelists often share...
A Work in Progress (Free subscription) | 04/09/2009
Whenever I try a new author (who I really like) and they happen to be part of a larger literary movement, one that I've not spent all that much time familiarizing myself with or studying previously, I get all excited...
What's Left in the Church (Free subscription) | 03/09/2009
There are always lists of books purporting to be what one should read. There are also books readers love. A friend of mine sent me along a link that puts them side by side. 1. ULYSSES by James Joyce* 2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald* 3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce* 4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov* 5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley 6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William...
Blog Made for the Purposes of One P (Free subscription) | 02/09/2009
The National Comedy Project -- which was currently comprised of X., his sleepy friend Bill, and a man who was convinced he was John Dos Passos -- took the morning to walk around Anchorage, Alaska. They would have to head up Glenn Highway soon enough to do a show at a lodge in a town that was still debating what to call itself, alight with the possibilities of invention, but this moment involved X.,...
A Work in Progress (Free subscription) | 31/08/2009
I'm not sure where I first came across Dawn Powell's books. Most likely I spotted one in a used bookstore and brought it home with me and then did a little Googling on her life and became intrigued by her...
Wine ~ Wein ~ Vino ~ Vin (Free subscription) | 28/08/2009
I just reread Erich Maria Remarque’s great novel ‘Im Westen nichts Neues’ the vigilant observer will catch the anachronistic image, but, you get the idea... couple of thoughts—I can never read it without being moved— but I consider how many individuals hate this book because they were made to read it in school. another thought is, though the title translates as ‘in...
Mike Hudack (Free subscription) | 19/08/2009
johncarney : mattharvey : There are all sorts of people who I totally disagree with politically while admiring their work. Robert Conquest, Evelyn Waugh, and John Dos Passos to name a few on the right. (Hey, I like John Carney’s stuff.) There are examples on the left too, of course: George B. Shaw and Dashiel Hammet, say. Novak’s work sucks because it was an extension of his politics,...
Smooth Blog (Free subscription) | 11/08/2009
Clue: Part Four: Rust. 7414-7422. Hyphenations and abbreviations are one. Solution: By Dweb This refers to ‘Part Four’ titled ‘Trust’, from the book ‘Three Soldiers’ By John Dos Passos http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/wwone/threes.html http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/wwone/threes.html#part4 It looked as if we had to do a word count and identify words 7414-7422 (8...
The One-Line Review (Free subscription) | 06/08/2009
USA Feature Film Director/Cinematographer: Josef von Sternberg Writers: John Dos Passos, Pierre Louÿs Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Lionel Atwill, Edward Everett Horton, Alison Skipworth, Cesar Romero, Don Alvarado, Tempe Pigott, Francisco Moreno Dietrich is delightful, and von Sternberg photographs her (and everything else, for that matter) exquisitely, but this light-hearted adaptation of Louÿs’s...
Sanctus Christopher (Free subscription) | 31/07/2009
A December 1948 party for Osbert and Edith Sitwell (seated, center) drew a roomful of bright lights to the Gotham Book Mart : clockwise from W. H. Auden, on the ladder at top right, were Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarrell, Charles Henri Ford (cross-legged, on the floor), William Rose Benét, Stephen Spender, Marya Zaturenska, Horace Gregory, Tennessee Williams,...
Marginal Revolution (Free subscription) | 24/07/2009
Kelly Jane Torrance has a very good article on this question. This part is quoting yours truly: "People have this innate view — it comes from friendship and marriage — that commitment is good. Which I agree with," he says....
Lone Gunman (Free subscription) | 22/07/2009
Like timesink productivity websites, books written purely to instruct us what books to read are inherently counterproductive. The Second Pass does the opposite, producing a list of ten ‘classic’ books not to read. White Noise by Don DeLillo Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez The Road by Cormac McCarthy The Rainbow by...
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