Category: creative-process
- Yair (and No)(The Faulkner Project) Pylon from Faulkner Novels 1930-1935 pp. 775-992. Library of America. **** Years after the fact, Faulkner told a class at the University of Virginia that he wrote Pylon because Absalom, Absalom! had become “inchoate” and he needed to take a break from it. Only William Faulkner would take a break from writing a ...Read more
- Caught Between Two Worlds(The Faulkner Project) Light in August from Faulkner Novels 1930-1935. Library of America. pp. 399-774. ***** Of Faulkner’s great novels, this is the one I like the least. I don’t believe I’d previously read it more than once, though I was shocked at how much of it I remembered, including whole paragraphs and sentences that stuck ...Read more
- We Look on in FascinationFor my 73rd Birthday Last Tuesday as I walked around Duke’s East Campus I saw the freshmen moving in (when I was at Duke, East Campus was for women; now it houses freshmen), all these fresh-faced, anxious, unformed young adults, and realized to my astonishment that it was fifty-five years ago that I did the same ...Read more
- Signifying Everything(The Faulkner Project) The Sound and the Fury from Faulkner Novels 1926-1929 Library of America pp. 877-1141. ***** I think of this as Faulkner’s greatest novel, which means that no one in America has written a better one. If there is a Great American Novel (there isn’t), this is it. This is my fifth or sixth reading ...Read more
- The World Opens Like a Flower (The Faulkner Project) Flags in the Dust from William Faulkner Novels 1926-1929. Library of America. pp. 541-875. ***** In October of 1927, in the rush and enthusiasm of finishing his third novel, his longest and most ambitious by far, William Faulkner sent this note to his publisher, Horace Liveright. “At last and certainly, * * * I ...Read more
- You Can Go Home Again. You Have To.(The Faulkner Project) Mosquitoes from William Faulkner Novels 1926-1929. Library of America. pp. 257-541. **** My first semester at Duke University, I had the great good fortune to encounter the two best professors of my life, Reynolds Price and Wallace Fowlie. I had courses with both of them (and it was all downhill from there). Price ...Read more
- Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go(The Faulkner Project) Soldiers’ Pay a novel by William Faulkner. Library of America William Faulkner, Novels 1926-1929. pp. 1-257. ***1/2 I’ve always been haunted by the fact that my father read Faulkner at the end of his life. He was only 47 when he died, and had had leukemia for six years; in the final years ...Read more
- Not the One Who Likes SpinachSanctuary by William Faulkner. Library of America Faulkner Novels 1930-1935. pp. 179-399 **** The official version of the genesis of Sanctuary—which Faulkner told in the preface to the Modern Library edition—is that, after publishing four novels, he was tired of making no money (how he thought The Sound and the Fury would make money I do ...Read more
- As Much as Ere a ManAs I Lay Dying a novel by William Faulkner. Faulkner Novels 1930-1935 in the Library of America. Pages 1-178. ***** I picked up As I Lay Dying almost on a whim—I’d read the early stories and novels of Hemingway and had this Library of America volume of Faulkner, so I thought it might be interesting to ...Read more
- Prof Meets CopIn the Cut a novel by Susanna Moore. Random House. ***** The end of this novel is so startling—and so nervy on the part of the author—that I almost couldn’t believe it. It’s one of those books where you think you’re missing the final pages, they’ve been ripped out (which is tough when you’re reading the ...Read more
- Memo to Jake Barnes: It’s Called Oral SexThe Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises & Other Writings 1918-1926. Library of America, pp 369-570. ***** One of the mildly annoying facts about the Hemingway oeuvre is that the Hemingway stand-in—easy to identify in every book—is always irresistible to women. Maybe Hemingway himself was irresistible; at least four wives that we ...Read more
- Hem IIIHemingway | The Blank Page | 1944-1961 a film by Ken Burns and Kim Novick. Streaming on PBS **** The Sun Also Rises & Other Writings 1918-1926 by Ernest Hemingway. Library of America. 850 pp. ***** There’s nothing about the writing or production values that makes this third episode of Hemingway not as good as the others, ...Read more
- Hem IIHemingway: The Avatar (1929-1944) A film by Ken Burns and Kim Novick. Available on PBS Streaming. ***** Once again, in this second episode, I was stuck by Hemingway’s youth (he was already calling himself Papa in 1929, at the age of thirty). By the end of this episode he’s just 45 years old, and he’s already ...Read more
- HemHemingway | A Writer (1899-1929) a film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Available on PBS streaming. ***** Hemingway was the first writer I loved and the primary inspiration for my becoming a writer. When I was fifteen years old my English teacher told us to read a biography of a writer, and I chose a ...Read more
- Portrait of a Lunatic (You Wrote About the Wrong Cousin, Iris Murdoch)The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch. Penguin Classics. 495 pp. $20.00 ***** The Sea, the Sea has everything going for it. It’s large and expansive, beautifully written; it contains a wealth of fascinating characters; it traces a wild plot, where things keep happening that you can’t believe, and it comes to an emotionally satisfying confusion. ...Read more
- Portrait of the Artists Through a Boozy HazeEarly Novels and Stories by James Baldwin: Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, Another Country. Library of America. 970 pp. In the midst of the endless current theorizing about race and sexuality and gender identity, and talk of all the books we must read (I hate to be told I must read a book), ...Read more
- Alice’s GazeLosing Alice a series by Sigan Avin. On Apple TV. With Ayelet Zurer, Lihi Kornowski, Gal Toren. **** Losing Alice is one of the stranger things I’ve ever seen on a screen. It’s a movie about the creative process, the artistic careers of women and men, and the lengths to which people will go to create ...Read more
- I Like IkeThe Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer Volume II: A Friend of Kafka to Passions. Library of America. 856 pp. ***** Back in the days when Isaac Bashevis Singer’s stories appeared in the New Yorker, I never missed one. It was a thrill to read the work of a man who wrote so vividly, who seemed ...Read more
- And Talk They DidLet Them All Talk a film by Steven Soderbergh. With Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest, Candice Bergen, Gemma Chan, Lucas Hedges. Available on HBO Plus. ***** At one point in Let Them All Talk, a movie about three old college friends who do a crossing on the Queen Mary 2, Susan (Dianne Wiest) stops an awkward conversation ...Read more
- Gone Fishin’Haven’t Posted in a While I wanted to drop a line to my loyal readers to say that the reason I haven’t posted in a while is that I recently got an idea for a longer writing project and want to take a look at that. I never know if a longer project is going to ...Read more
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All Shook UpWhat's in a Song? IIWriting for his LifeWhat’s in a Song?Mixed Feelings
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (127)American literature (226)art (123)Buddhism (171)Christianity (132)creative process (262)death and dying (144)meditation (125)movies (167)music (42)race (110)religion (196)sex (187)spirituality (174)the art of narrative (266)Uncategorized (21)world literature (23)