Im Lauf der Zeit (“Kings of the Road”)
I saw Wings of Desire way back when Netflix used to mail DVDs in envelopes. Later I saw Paris, Texas. These are the Wenders films I heard about back when I was first exploring the renowned auteurs of cinema, and I’ve seen them both a few times. Recently I also saw The American Friend. Kings…
Halloween approaches
It’s autumn and a young man’s fancy turns to…well I’m too old to remember what young men fancy at any time of year. But I fancy reading horror and ghost stories as Halloween looms. The Elementals is surprisingly well-crafted for an early ’80s mass market horror novel. It’s got a Southern Gothic flair, and without…
The Other
I’d thought as a long-time fan of horror that I was at least aware of all the classics of the genre. Until a few months ago I’d never heard of Thomas Tryon’s The Other, and what I read about it intrigued me sufficiently that when I was able to score a digital version for under…
Playground
Richard Powers’ latest is another complex and tightly structured novel spanning nearly a century. There are two primary narrative strands woven together like a double helix, one first-person stream relayed by Todd Keane, an early social media and AI innovator from Chicago, and the other a third-person tale focused on Evelyn Beaulieu, a French Canadian…
Cities of the Red Night
I’ve read a handful of Burroughs novels and also Casey Rae’s entertaining and informative William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ‘n Roll. I think this is easily my favorite novel by the Beat icon. It is ridiculous, absurd, wholly pointless, unrepentently filthy, and a great deal of fun. In Casey Rae’s examination of…
A Day in the Life
Woke a bit before 6 am this morning. Drank coffee outside on the porch and read an essay in Harper’s by Lydia Davis. She’s an author I’ve encountered many times in journals and magazines, and I’m pretty sure I have a story collection or two of hers somewhere? At any rate she’s writing about observation…
A History of France
I wanted to refresh my general knowledge of French history before focusing in detail on a few eras, regions, and personalities. A History of France seemed a good place to start. John Julius Norwich had written quite readable histories of Byzantium and European monarchs, and his father Duff Cooper was Churchill’s liason with the Free…
The Rector of Justin
Brian Aspinwall becomes at age 27 a teacher at a prestigious private boys’ school in New England. He is recruited suddenly in 1939 to fill in for a master who has gone off to Canada to enlist in the RAF. It is primarily through Brian’s diary that we learn about the school Justin Martyr and…
Sula
Sula is a magnificent read, a short novel but a richly realized world. We spend almost a century in Bottom, the Black neighborhood of Medallion, Ohio. Two families entwine in the narrative–one-legged Eva Peace serves as matriarch of one. She manages a thriving bungalow of sorts, a chaotic and haphazard structure akin to the Winchester…
Recent Reads
I’d read 100 Years of Solitude about 30 years ago and was absolutely flabbergasted by it. Immediately one of my life goals became “get your Spanish into adequate shape to read more Garcia Marquez but in the original language.” I managed to have some conversations with locals in Spanish on a couple trips to Colombia,…
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Mysterium Coniunctionis 