acommonreader.st
Picture source A King At Night at biblioklept.org has done a terrific job piecing together the story within Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. Or maybe one of the stories within the movie. It’s funny to read the post and realize how slight a storyline can end up as such a powerful film. I also […]
From the back cover of the New Directions edition: First published in 1971 as a typewritten edition, then finally printed in book form in 1989, I served the King of England is a comic novel telling the tale of Ditie, a hugely ambitious but simple waiter in a deluxe Prague hotel in the years before […]
A Christmas Eve entry in the series of excerpts from Bohumil Hrabal’s fantastic tale, where the unbelievable routinely comes true. At times the plot feels like a rickety framework on which to hang anecdotes such as the following…not that I’m complaining. While in the prison for millionaires (more on this in the next post), Ditie […]
I’m late in posting about Vaclav Havel’s death but I didn’t want it to go unremarked at this blog. (I also wanted to link to Sheila O’Malley’s moving tribute at her blog.) There are two movies I recommend if you have a chance to see them (not to mention there is a long list of […]
First up in 2012 at Reading Odyssey is Homer’s Iliad. Based on my experience with The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander this year, I highly recommend exploring the Iliad through Reading Odyssey. The conference calls proved to be exceedingly informative (see this post for a sampling of the Arrian calls) and the discussion questions […]
Bohumil Hrabal’s fantastic tale takes a dark turn as World War II begins. Ditie loses his job in Prague when he falls in love with a German. Even as Hrabal describes an absurd setting, an ugly edge creeps in with his humor. I’m providing another long excerpt to give an idea of his blending the […]
I wanted to pass on this extended quote from Bohumil Hrabal’s I Served the King of England because it captures the element of his comic madness. Ditie, a (short in stature) waiter-in-training at the Golden Prague Hotel and Restaurant, asks a traveling salesman representing a tailoring firm from Padubice why he cuts strips of parchment […]
I finished Loving by Henry Green yesterday and my opinion on it seems to change each time I think about it. I enjoyed the novel but at the same time I got the feeling I was being duped. The abrupt, fairy-tale ending only added to that feeling. At the same time, though, I couldn’t help […]
Awkward silence: an uncomfortable pause in conversation, causing tension or unpleasant feelings. Example Me: “I just found out today one of the guys at work had a prominent role in a TV show a few years ago.” Family: “Really? What show?” Me: “To Catch a Predator” awkward silence
We were finally able to announce that the company I work for is being acquired. Thanks to regulatory rules, the long nights and weekends I worked pre-acquisition are only a warm-up for the fresh hell of the next two months. Instead of a recap for the year I want to look at my recent discoveries […]
I finally finished the audiobook of William Gaddis’ J R and thoroughly enjoyed it. I recommend it, especially for anyone that has wanted or tried to read it and felt overwhelmed at keeping so many unattributed conversations straight. Narrator Nick Sullivan provides distinctive voices for each character. Think of it as the color-coding Faulkner wanted […]
Posted for no other reason than I watched “Seven Chances” with the family last night and the boys wanted me to replay this scene (when they could speak between laughs, that is). TCM had Buster Keaton as their feature star a couple of months ago and the boys became huge fans. As zrsio, the uploader […]
In his own words: The Paris Review interview with Terry Southern in 1958. INTERVIEWER: I’d like to ask you some questions now about the work itself. You’ve described your novels as “nonrepresentational.” I wonder if you’d mind defining that term? GREEN: “Nonrepresentational” was meant to represent a picture which was not a photograph, nor a […]
The Physics of NASCAR: How to Make Steel + Gas + Rubber = Speed by Diandra Leslie-Pelecky Foreword by Ray EvernhamA few Saturdays ago I was sitting in the library while my boys were deciding on which books to check out when I saw this book in a science display. After leafing through a few […]