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The Truth about the Savolta Case by Eduardo Mendoza Translated from the Spanish by Alfred Mac Adam, Pantheon Books, 1992 Mendoza’s novel, released in 1975, is set in Barcelona at the end of World War I amid political, economic and social turmoil. When reading about the political movements during the early part of last century, […]
The dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1863: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that […]
At the risk of mentioning the book too often, Katie Low has a review of Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization by Richard Miles in The Oxonian Review (link is dead). Her review and summary are pretty spot on. Here’s part of the review: Miles weaves into his account […]
Picture source I want to make sure I give proper credit for these amazing pictures so I highly recommend checking out the other pictures and write-up from Martino – NL on his visit to an abandoned castle in Spain. The bookcase above looks nice from a distance, but upon closer inspection (below) the books have […]
Reading has taken a back seat lately so it follows that writing about reading has as well. But since I can’t write about what I’ve read, I’ll write about what I’m planning to read. While reading Petersburg I kept thinking that it reminded me of something I had already read and it finally dawned on […]
Demonstration on October 17, 1905 by Ilya Yefimovich Repin Picture sourceWhat an amazing, strange, wonderful, funny, frustrating, magical book. Needless to say, I highly recommend it. So what have you heard about Petersburg? Vladimir Nabokov declared it one of the most important works of the twentieth century, but he also stated no good English translation […]
Woman Sitting on a Red-Flowered Sofa by Gustave Caillebotte (1882)Picture source Anna Petrovna! We had forgotten about her: but Anna Petrovna had returned and now she was waiting…but first: —those twenty four hours! — —those twenty-four hours in our narration expanded and scattered throughout psychic spaces: as a hideous dream; and the closed off the […]
Work is taking all my time…and then some. But I wanted to share a passage I read last night that captured much of what I’m enjoying about Petersburg. There have been many plot twists and revelations. What should I do when I want to comment on what I’ve read before more is revealed and before […]
Yet another extended quote from Petersburg. Many of the themes and motifs I mentioned in the first post continue to surface. Early in Chapter Six, the crowd in the streets is described as a wave, made up not of people but parts of bodies and articles of clothing. Bely captures the feeling surrounding the loss […]
To make up for light posting and little time to read, I wanted to share a passage from Petersburg that I found fascinating. I realize it is an overlong excerpt, but I found I couldn’t cut anything out of it and retain its power. To set the stage: Nikolai Apollonovich (Kolenka) has just returned home […]
So…another brief recap of things I’ve been listening to over the past couple of months as well as a few I missed in the previous audiobook recap. The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolaño I read and listened to 2666 but only listened to this book. A wild ride and after it’s done I feel I don’t […]
I’ve read maybe 10 pages this week and got nothin’, so in the spirit of Halloween I present a few clips of Monster Chiller Horror Theatre with Count Floyd. I haven’t seen these clips in years (and only vaguely remember seeing them the first time) but I’m hooked again and look foward to seeing more […]
Those were strange, misty days: venomous October was passing with its freezing tread; frozen dust blew around the city in drab-brown vortices; and the golden whisper of foliage lay down submissively on the paths of the Summer Garden, and he rustling purple lay down submissively at people’s feet, to wind and chase at the feet […]
How terrible is the fate of an ordinary, perfectly normal man: his life is resolved by a vocabulary of readily understood words, and by the practice of exceedingly clear actions; those actions carry him into the boundless distance, like a little boat rigged with words and gestures that are entirely expressible; if, however, that boat […]
From an article by E. J. Wagner in November’s Smithsonian: On the evening of April 6, 1830, the light of a full moon stole through the windows of 128 Essex Street, one of the grandest houses in Salem, Massachusetts. Graced with a beautifully balanced red brick facade, a portico with white Corinthian columns and a […]
Nikolai, upon crashing a ball wearing a cape and domino but freezing on the dancefloor, begins to realize he has turned a bad situation into something worse… It was still him, of course: Nikolai Apollonovich. He had come today to say—to say what? He had forgotten his own self; forgotten his thoughts; and forgotten his […]
Picture source My introduction to the use of contrasting plants to send an evil message involved a neighbor’s yard sprouting winter grass in their dormant bermuda grass reading “31 – 7”—that year’s Alabama/Auburn football score. Every day, until the neighbor seeded the rest of his yard with winter grass, I would look out my bathroom […]
Apollon Apollonovich had a strange secret of his own: a world of figures, contours, tremors, weird physical sensations—in short: a universe of oddities. This universe always arose on the brink of sleep, and it arose in such a way that, at the moment he dropped off to sleep, Apollon Apollonovich would remember all the incoherences […]
The Neglected Books Page had a review of the audiobook releases of William Gaddis’ The Recognitions and JR. Based on the review, I downloaded The Recognitions and have been listening to it for the last two weeks. It is everything said in the Neglected review—Nick Sullivan’s performance is amazing. Reading Gaddis can be frustrating, trying […]
I notice many blogs are posting poems related to autumn, capturing many of the attributes of fall through imagery and descriptions of the season. I’d like to volunteer a recording that, for me, aurally captures autumn, although it may be by association because of personal experience. The instrumental collaboration of Basic between Robert Quine and […]