Tuesday, November 25, 2008
I don’t think you can know me for very long without realizing I like Neil Gaiman’s writing quite a lot. Some of it’s better than other bits, but over all, the man continues to put out wonderful books. His newest novel, The Graveyard Book, underscores his reputation as a great writer. I read it in […]
Saturday, November 8, 2008
cruelty. don’t talk to me about cruelty or what i am capable of. when i wanted the roaches dead i wanted them dead and i killed them. i took a broom to their country and smashed and sliced without warning without stopping and i smiled all the time i was doing it. it was a […]
Raymond Chandler is fast on his way to my short list of writers. I love his clipped style and imagery. The metaphors are fantastic. Lines like, “My voice sounded like somebody tearing slats off a chicken coop.” He and Dashiell Hammett invented a truly American, truly new style. I’m taking it at face value that […]
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Keats knows his business. If the primary goal of poetry is to strike to the heart of things succinctly, Keats nails it. This poem, for instance, tells a complete story in three stanzas of eight lines each. He wastes nothing, but doesn’t sound sparse. He maintains a sumptuous, bittersweet atmosphere without bloating, and without sounding […]
Friday, September 19, 2008
When I was a kid, we had a claymation video of The Little Prince which scared and bored me in turns. My mother threw it away years ago, in a pre-move purge of nonessential objects, and I never missed it. I couldn’t find any footage online, so I can’t reevaluate it. Maybe it wasn’t as […]
Thursday, September 18, 2008
One of my favorite writers, Neil Gaiman, wrote The Dangerous Alphabet as a Christmas card, which along with his “Nicholas Was” flash piece, is an example of my favorite way to celebrate Christmas: write a creepy story. HarperCollins decided at some point The Dangerous Alphabet would make a better book than card, so they asked […]
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
The Big Sleep is the first novel of Raymond Chandler’s I’ve read, and so far the best. The language is magnificent. The cadence, iconic similes, and raw energy all form a tense, brooding mood which plays over my mind in black and white. And, of course, the dialog snaps back and forth—everybody’s clever; witty repartee […]
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Alberto Manguel wrote A Reading Diary over the course of a year, as he reread twelve of his favorite books. It centers around associative reading, by which he means that each book you read changes you, and will change the way you read the next book. The more you read, and the more widely you […]
Monday, September 15, 2008
Hunter S. Thompson makes me want to be a journalist. As with some other larger-than-life writers, I’m not sure where the legend ends and he begins, but since I’m interested in his writing and not his person, it doesn’t much matter. His love for language and his discipline are especially inspiring. I read somewhere, while […]
Friday, September 12, 2008
I was thrown off, initially, by the run-on, unfinished beginning of Piedra de Sol, or The Sunstone, by Octavio Paz. It’s all one jumbled sentence and it starts mid-way. I realized, when I finished reading, that the poem loops. When you get to the end, it’s not the end; Paz repeats the beginning stanza, which […]