Please note: I was trying out different themes for the site and a few recent comments got deleted. My apologies for this mistake.
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. […]
Bruno Schulz’s drawing for the original cover, 1937Previous posts on Ferdydurke: Introduction: who’s read it is an ass Source of the title? Freddy Durkee The first chapter: do you know what it feels like to be diminished within someone else? An overview: they’re NOT a bunch of harmless duffers Online videos Gombrowicz had published two […]
Still from 30 Door Key‘s face-pulling sceneI was unable to find a copy of 30 Door Key, the 1991 English adaptation of Ferdydurke directed by Jerzy Skolimowski (who just directed The Avengers) and starring Iain Glen and Crispin Glover. All copies available on WorldCat were at institutions that don’t participate in interlibrary loans for audiovisual […]
Wiesław Walkuski’s poster for the third Gombrowicz Festival in Radom, Poland, 1997 Picture sourceCzeslaw Milosz’s overview can be found here and the opening chapter addresses some of the book’s themes. After Joey’s transformation into a teenager by Pimko, he finds himself assigned to the sixth grade in Principal Piórkowski’s school. His fellow students, angry at […]
Recovering from a fun weekend, not to mention a long day in the sun with over a hundred thousand of my closest friends. Credit goes to my wife for a great Father’s Day present. Posting on Ferdydurke should continue tomorrow.
I provided Czeslaw Milosz’s overview of Ferdydurke in the opening post on this book. I’ll probably have one post on the action he summarizes because it is the most straightforward part of the book. Well, as straightforward as Gombrowicz can be. I want to spend more time on a few sections that people might tend […]
I run the risk of posting too much on this novel since I thoroughly enjoyed it. As I sit down to write I’m starting to understand more of what’s going on in the book, causing me to appreciate it even more. I don’t plan on covering the entire novel in detail but there are parts […]
Cover of original release of Ferdydurke, 1937/1938 Cover drawing by Bruno Schulz Picture sourceSince mash-ups are popular now, imagine a combination of Kafka (particularly The Trial), Voltaire, and François Rabelais. It turns out something akin to this combination has already been done in Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz. Any description of the book will fall short […]
Continuing with my erratic movie posts for this year… For more foreign movies, check out Caroline’s World Cinema Series 2012 and Richard’s monthly Foreign Film Festival round-up. Another post about a film adaptation of a recent book I’ve read… The IMDb.com page for Wierna rzeka provides the summary: Set during the insurgency of 1863, the […]
The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article by R. M. Douglas on the forced German relocations after World War II: “The European Atrocity You Never Heard About“. Except readers have heard about them. Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin contains a section on the many relocations of Germans. Not to mention George […]
You can download the podcasts of BBC Radio 4’s presentation of Ulysses at this site. While it says the podcasts will be available for 14 days, don’t wait–Life and Fate had the same claim and those episodes were pulled after a week. Updates: a review of the adaptation. And another. An article on why Ulysses […]
I don’t believe any of the Transatlantic Sessions are on “instant” view but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy parts of the series. I’m focusing on the first sessions since I enjoy them the most. Many of these performances can be found on YouTube in varying degrees of quality. The intro for the first series: […]
Ashes and Diamonds by Jerzy Andrzejewski Translated by D. J. Welsh Foreword by Barbara Niemczyk, Introduction by Heinrich Böll Northwestern University Press, 239 pages ISBN: 0-8101-0856-9 From you, as burning chips of resin, Fiery fragments circle far and near: Ablaze, you don’t know if you are to be free, Or if all is yours will […]
The Faithful River by Stefan Żeromski Translated by Bill Johnston Northwestern University Press, 179 pages ISBN: 978-0810115965 The Faithful River is set in the Kielce region of central Poland in the winter and spring of 1863, during the January Uprising. At this time the country of Poland did not exist; since the partitions of the […]
I skipped the release of 2010’s Robin Hood (with Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett), but had it on as background noise recently. When I heard the following lines, though, I became more interested…well, for a few minutes anyway. Rarely does a version of Robin Hood portray Richard Coeur-de-Lion in this light: King Richard The Lionheart: […]
While I’m waiting for a replacement copy of The Faithful River by Stefan Żeromski (the last 25 pages were missing), I think I’ll post my scattered notes on another book I’m reading: A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age by Steven Nadler. When I become interested enough […]
Since I will be reading several of Stefan Żeromski’s books this year (The Faithful River, Ashes, and The Coming Spring), I thought an introduction to the author was appropriate. The article at Culture.pl serves as a good overview since it goes into great detail about his life and works. In addition, I’ll provide a few […]