Bovary and the Beatles
Near the end of Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, in the translation by Geoffrey Wall, there is a line, describing Charles’s inability to cope with the loss of his wife:…
Tag: books
A Worthy Quote from Borges
From “The Immortal,” by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley: “I have noticed that in spite of religion, the conviction as to one’s own immortality is extraordinarily rare. Jews,…
It All Starts with Sturgeon, sort of…
Science fiction took a big step toward modernity (actually postmodernity) with Theodore Sturgeon’s “Unite and Conquer,” which I read recently in the collection A Way Home. Within that story, the…
2010 – what I should have learned…
After finishing Our Man in Havana with relative alacrity, and the resultant satisfaction that comes from a really good book, I am forced to contemplate the time wasted with other…
The end of “The End of the Affair”
The End of the Affair was simply a great book. I had avoided Graham Greene books up to this point. I do not know why since he is often associated…
The Reivers – Read It!
I recently finished reading William Faulkner’s The Reivers. It was an excellent book, highly recommended. Some great passages stood out in my mind: “…if all the human race ever stops…
Wastelands…
I, like so many others in the reading public, went through a Stephen King phase. It was in junior high for me, when I bought his books by the yard…
It’s all in a name…
I do not remember a time when the words “Skywalker” or “Alderaan” sounded nonsensical and silly. In fact, I don’t know if that time ever existed. They seem like perfectly…
Burgess’s Honey for the Bears
I recently finished reading Honey for the Bears, by Anthony Burgess. Of course his most famous work by far is A Clockwork Orange, although his other writing is highly regarded…
It always happens…
When you’re way way way way down at the bottom of the writing world, it seems every time you look up, there’s a luminary (or at least someone with better…