Archive for the 'books' Category
The Future, or the Recent Past
Yes, I am determined to keep writing this blog, though I’m unsure if anyone but spambots are reading it. Obviously I’ve stalled out a few times, usually because my rate of reading exceeds my ability to think of anything to say about what I’ve read. Also, I haven’t been able to settle on a reading [...]
Read More..>>3. Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers)
A pretty interesting compilation of wisdom from the Talmud, usually presented in short bits that start off “Rabbi X used to say…” The thousands of years of scholarship and commentary on the Old Testament pay off here.
Read More..>>Western Canon #2: Gilgamesh
The Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest known written story in the world. Unlike other ancient writings, the Bible or the works of Homer, it did not enter the wider western literary consciousness until relatively recently. Its tablets were unearthed in 1853 in the ruins of Nineveh, nearby the modern Iraqi city of Mosul, [...]
Read More..>>The Western Canon–Intro
We’ve been dormant here for a few months: a sentence that I know you read often on blogs. It isn’t that I stopped reading books, just that I haven’t had the energy to write extended responses to them. Other things have occupied my time: buying a house, figuring out how to mow a lawn. I’ve [...]
Read More..>>The Family Moskat by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1950)
Five years after the defeat of the Nazis, there had only been a few attempts to treat the Holocaust in literary fiction. The subject perhaps seemed better suited to non-fiction, be it history, memoir (such as Primo Levi’s work) or found documentary sources (the diaries and journals of victims—Anne Frank’s being the most widely read [...]
Read More..>>Edmund Wilson- The Little Blue Light
Play debuted in 1950 This strange drama of ideas is a bit Sci-Fi (it even involves a ray gun). It would be fascinating to see it performed, as it likely has not been for around sixty years. The problem is the setting: Wilson places the action in small town America, but nearly all the drama [...]
Read More..>>Isaac Asimov- Pebble in the Sky
Isaac Asimov always seemed to be around at my nerdiest teenage moments. I remember spending my lunch breaks in the high school library reading his two volume autobiography so that I wouldn’t have to encounter other people. His proud geekiness was inspiring. Also, I was a devotee of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. He’d lent [...]
Read More..>>Briefly Noted
All books listed here were published in 1950. 1. Cornell Woolrich- “Fright” A man is about marry, when a drunken fling comes back at him in the form of a blackmailing would-be femme fatale. Our protagonist, however, proves to be a bit more fatal than she is. He takes his new bride to a new [...]
Read More..>>Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon
Published in 1950 Simenon’s Frank Friedmaier is a Frenchman living under the Nazi occupation, or perhaps he is a German living under Allied occupation-—it is never made clear, and the character’s names (Kromer, Timo, Lotte) blur matters of nationality. Since Frank is apolitical and certainly not a patriot, where his oppressors come from means little [...]
Read More..>>Henry Green- Nothing
Published in 1950 A light marriage farce in which characters call one another “monkey.” Great. The barely adult children of two former lovers (both now widowed) announce their engagement after a bit of sleuthing to make sure they aren’t actually half-siblings. The parents, who are still in love, do their passive aggressive best to keep [...]
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