Another post while I’m away… “A gentleman does not kick a woman.” “Your lordship is right as far as that goes,” said Kazmer Rezeda. “If the occasion arises, strangling is far more appropriate.” Hungarian Literature Online had a recent excerpt from next year’s release of Gyula Krúdy’s 1931 novel The Knight of the Cordon Bleu. […]
Month: 12 years ago
While I’m away from wifi service I have a few miscellaneous posts lined up… Many thanks to Sheila O’Malley for the link to Kim Morgan’s interview with the four stars (Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox) of the movie Deliverance. She only had ten minutes for the interview. Ten minutes. As Sheila […]
I’ll be taking a few days off as my wife and I celebrate our anniversary. Since we’ll be in the area where we held the wedding, I’ll add a link to my post on The Art of Eating Well.
Witold Gombrowicz wrote A Kind of Testament, an autobiographical account of his life and work, in 1968, a year before he died. While anything that comes directly from Gombrowicz has to be taken with a grain of salt, the flow of information and insight that comes from the book feels as wonderful as his other […]
I plan on posting occasional entries from Diary by Witold Gombrowicz over the next few months (or however long it takes me to get through it). I’m reading the 2012 Yale University Press edition, translation by Lillian Vallee. There are several references to Pornografia in the Diary and I’ll post from two related entries. Before […]
I’ll tell you about yet another adventure of mine, probably one of the most disastrous. At the time—the year was 1943—I was living in what was once Poland and what was once Warsaw, at the rock-bottom of an accomplished fact. Silence. The thinned-out bunch of companions and friends from the former cafes—the Zodiac, the Ziemiańska, […]
I occasionally mention the audiobooks I listen to during my commute and this will be another such post. I’m listening to Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live, or A life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer at the moment and wanted to add to the generally positive remarks I’ve seen on […]
Freely adapted from “Job,” the novel by Joseph Roth, “Sins of Man” is a thoroughly sentimental, painstakingly somber and devastatingly complete portrait of a man in sorrow. While it is uncompromisingly tearful, it happens also to have been splendidly performed, honestly directed and handsomely produced. In sum, a well-planned conspiracy against the lachrymal duct which […]
Ewa Krzyzewska and Zbigniew Cybulski in Ashes and DiamondsI warned this would turn into cinema week, as I continue with my erratic foreign movie posts for this year as well as posting on movies adapted from books. For more foreign movies, check out Caroline’s World Cinema Series 2012 and Richard’s monthly Foreign Film Festival round-up. […]
This will likely be movie week as I try to catch on posting about movies I’ve seen recently and over the past few months. This movie hits a trifecta of associations: Continuing with my erratic foreign movie posts for this year—for more foreign movies, check out Caroline’s World Cinema Series 2012 and Richard’s monthly Foreign […]
Stevenson House / French House where Robert Louis Stevenson stayed while in Monterey, California Picture sourceLast summer I posted on visiting Robert Louis Stevenson State Park and the memorial commemorating his stay there as detailed in The Silverado Squatters. The hike up to the top of Mt. Saint Helena provides one of the best views […]
The City of Marvels by Eduardo Mendoza (translation by Bernard Molloy) has been sitting on my bookshelf for a decade. I needed the push of Spanish Lit Month hosted by Richard and Winstonsdad to finally open it. From the bookflap: Here is the story of Onofre Bouvila, a poor Catalan country boy who arrives in […]
Winstonsdad and Richard are hosting Spanish Lit Month at their blogs this month. Stealing the archives idea from Simon through Lizzy I thought I would highlight three of the Spanish language books I’ve previously covered at this blog and one series of books. Miguel de Unamuno has long been one of my favorite authors and […]
Meet Ginger, the newest addition to our family. It’s hard to get her to stay still at the moment. The boys are excited and she’s doing well in her new house. So far–she’s been here less than a day. She will probably appear on Cesar Millan’s Dog Whisperer TV show later this year in a […]
What to do when you’re sick and you can’t concentrate enough to read or post? The other day my wife made some comment about stats on her business website so I poked around on pageviews on this blog. I was pleasantly surprised with what I found. It’s easy to tell what is being covered in […]
Almost immediately, I hit a snag. It is close to impossible to browse a serious library’s collection of porn and porn criticism without getting sucked into big, sexy historical theories. Within an hour of my visit to Harvard’s Widener Library, I was beginning to suspect that smut had been behind the rise of … everything. […]