I can’t say I actually know much about the concept/reality of “Grub Street,” but I looked it up. Apparently, it’s both a real street in London traditionally housing the literary and poetic districts. But over time, it came more so to mean a more pejorative term for hack-writing and cheap literary output. In this novel, it’s both again. The novel focuses on the prevailing question of whether or not writing should be geared toward a reading audience (ie a paying audience) or work more toward […]
Perfectly ok novel, but it was read by Fat Tony, so there you go.
This is the novel written by Mario Puzo. I have not yet done my research, but given that I have seen the movie a dozen times or so and that I recognize and am familiar with so much of this, it wouldn’t surprise if Mario Puzo wrote the novel with the screenplay already in his back pocket read to go. He wouldn’t be the first person to do this, and he certainly wouldn’t be the last. This novel is pretty much the movie. Some aspects […]
“A book is born into a puddle of treacle; the brine of hostile criticism is only a memory.”
The header picture of this review is Elizabeth Hardwick talking with her (former) student Darryl Pinckney, also a novelist and critic. He writes the introduction to this collection from the perspective what it was like to be the student of Hardwick. This is exactly the kind of introduction this book needs. She’s a critic to be sure, and a wonderful writer, but she’s not the kind of critic that you find in contemporary literature journals. Her stuff is a little more timeless, written for a […]
“This is not her conclusion. This is her verdict” – One of the very best short story writers I have ever read.
There is an introduction to this collection written by Gallant where she states: “There is something I keep wanting to say about reading short stories. I am doing it now, because I may never have another occasion. Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait.” I both agree and disagree with Gallant on this point, but I […]
A Plague of Books
This will be my last review. I am closing out the year the way I began, with a Louise Erdrich novel. This novel is like several of her novels, the story of a town, the story of a family, and representing and recreating a panoply of voices. Taking place in the South Dakota town of Pluto, this novel begins in the town where a horrendous murder leads to a horrendous lynching. The guilty party was never really found, but the white rage that was felt […]
Nummer tre and Today I Read Today I Wrote Nothing
Min Kamp 3 – 5/5 Stars In this next installment of the series we find our dauntless hero Karl Ove, now at 12 beginning to discover himself as a little person. Considering that this novel starts off with our young protagonist being super mad about moving to a farming region on an island and subsequently breaking his family’s tv and then lying about it, I most definitely connected with this one a lot. The bulk of the rest of the novel splits its time between […]
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