Author: Dwight
I know what I’ll be leafing through at work today. I’m sure I’ll be posting some excerpts over the next week. If you’re interested in Roth, be sure to check out the book excerpt at The New Yorker, which includes ten letters from the book. Paul Raymont at Philosophy, lit, etc. has more links at […]
Biography of Gyula Krúdy I discovered Trevor at The Mookse and the Gripes has reviewed this and another NYRB Classic I started, so I’ll be sure and link his posts. While there will be some overlap in our reviews I’ll try to focus on additional topics in Krúdy’s work. Translator George Szirtes provides a helpful […]
Ramon Casas “La Madeleine” (1892) I seem to have misplaced a week of my life…probably the combination of a brutal head cold and long stressful work days. In trying to get caught up on what others have posted I found The Neglected Books Page‘s comments on Fortunata and Jacinta by Benito Pérez Galdós, calling it […]
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 […]