Hemingway Home: Past, Prose, & Polydactyly in Paradise
A visit to the Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West is a perfect encapsulation of the uniquity of the southernmost point in the United States.
Tagged: literature
Sunday Morning! Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison
Naturally, Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison is an unfinished work. All things living are unfinished. But what’s there is so tremendous.
Sunday Morning! The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright
Richard Wright’s “lost” 1942 novel of guilt, exile, and spiritual initiation has been fortuitously pulled up from the memory hole. It’s no less urgent today.
Explode the Canon: How to Fight a Better Canon War
Let’s explode the Canon and cultivate critical distance, opening up new vistas and leaving behind stale arguments.
Tradition & Memory: A Child’s Christmas In Wales
A Child’s Christmas in Wales is itself, and in being itself it speaks to variegated experiences beyond its author’s own knowledge.
Re-reading (And Not Reading) James Joyce
I know every single one of you is wondering whether and in what ways I appreciate James Joyce’s work. So…In praise of (and in fear of) James Joyce’s oeuvre.
Sunday Morning! Paul Bowles’ “You Are Not I”
On Paul Bowles’ short story, an alleged murder he committed, and the rediscovery of Sara Driver’s 1981 no budget film adaptation.
Sunday Morning! “The Spider’s House” by Paul Bowles
The Bowles series continues with Paul’s 1955 novel about the Moroccan independence movement and the struggles of ordinary people to keep a corner of their souls free of political power struggles.
Sunday Morning! “Two Serious Ladies”
Exploring the Bowles cannon continues with Jane Bowles’s more comedic novel about people who also wander halfway around the world to hear their own voice.
Sunday Morning! “Stoner” by John Williams
The “rediscovered classic” of academic life does what great art is supposed to do: immerse us in the inner life of an individual without romanticizing him, It is ennobling.
Fried Green Tomatoes and The Husband Problem
Since Valentine’s Day is looming on the horizon yet again, I decided to reread several of my fave romance novels just like I did last year. But this time, I’m reading literary books rather...
Sunday Morning! “Ducks, Newburyport”
Our minds are messy places. This novel takes you into the very nervous mind of an Ohio mother, housewife, and pie baker over the course of a thousand pages and mostly through one very long sentence.
Sunday Morning! Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Christmas is a time for weird encounters and uncanny happenings.
Sunday Morning! Beginning John Cheever
On a recommendation from a local poet, I have started reading the short stories of an American master of the form, and was greatly rewarded for the effort.
Monday Morning! “Paris Without End: the True Story of Hemingway’s First Wife”
Moving out after a breakup delayed me from posting on time about this biographical history of a famous literary breakup!
Sunday Morning! Balzac’s Wild Ass’s Skin
The Balzac streak continues with a supernatural tale built on the fantastical conceit that our energies can be used to fulfill our desires or squandered and lost.
Sunday Morning! “White Girls” by Hilton Als
Here’s a book that takes cultural essay writing to a whole other level.
Monday Afternoon?!! Balzac’s Old Goriot & Midnight Cowboy
A day late and a dollar short with two stories of the rake’s progress.
Sunday Morning! Beginning Balzac & Eugénie Grandet
I suppose by middle age it’s high time I started with Balzac…
Sunday Morning! On Reading (and reading and reading) Thomas Wolfe
On a posthumous novel by the great writer (and overwriter) from North Carolina.
