I almost abandoned this book several times, especially during the first 100 pages. I had heard good things about it—lot of rave reviews and such. And since I liked Slowness and Identity, The Unbearable Lightness of Being seemed like the logical next step. Maybe it was my state of mind when I started the book—I’d […]
This was the first book by Martin Amis that I’ve read. However, it was not the first book of Martin Amis’ that I had planned to read. I had first desired to read what is considered his most famous, none other than London Fields. But for whatever reason I always put off digging into London […]
“For Franz music was the art that comes closest to Dionysian beauty in the sense of intoxication. No one can get really drunk on a novel or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Beethoven’s Ninth, Bartok’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, or the Beatles’ White Album? Franz made no distinction between […]
“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You wil get an enormous reward. You will have created […]
The Best American series has been around for some time now but this is the first one I’ve picked up. Eggers has assembled a wonderful, well-balanced anthology of writing that spans fiction, comics, current events, religion, and lists like the “Best American Fake Headlines” (courtesy of The Onion), the “Best American First Sentences of Novels of 2005,” and my personal favorite […]
“For the first twenty-four hours, the pirate station broadcasts the sound of someone coughing nervously. An august beginning. It’s not the dead air of the rural FM dial. It’s someone coughing nervously. Much nervousness at the pirate station, and thus much nervous coughing. The next Tuesday a jazz band […]
Yesterday I gave a recital/clinic at a high school in Burlington, VT, which meant there was no evening concert. This left me with the entire rest of the day free to go explore and acquire some new things. The first stop was a little used book store, where I found a hardcover copy of Paul […]
Disgrace is a relatively short book but it contains plenty to think about. Set in contemporary South Africa, it’s the story of David Lurie, an amorous 52-year-old university professor, who through an indiscretion with a student, succeeds in losing his position at the university. In order to escape the commotion in Cape Town following his […]
I decided to pick up this book because it’s supposed to be one of Pamuk’s best. One interesting feature of the novel is that the narrator changes each chapter, providing a shift in points of view and depictions of events similar to Rashomon, but different in that the narrative flows continuously rather than replaying itself […]
As you might have inferred from a previous post, I’m currently reading My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 Nobel Laureate in Literature. Among the many themes Pamuk deals with in the novel is the question of what constitutes “style.” The dictionary defines style as “the combination of distinctive features of literary or […]