Category: the-art-of-narrative
- The Itch to WriteNotes During a Pandemic One of the great pleasures of talking to my brother frequently—which I’ve been doing lately–is hearing of writers I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. Bill mentioned to me, for instance, that he had just bought two volumes of the reviews of Marjorie Perloff, a name I’d never heard. She writes regularly for the ...Read more
- Born WriterWhat Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker by Damon Young. Harper Collins. 320 pp. $15.99 Damon Young is famous as a blogger, co-founder of the website Very Smart Brothas, and in What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker has done something deceptively difficult: pulled together a collection of essays all of which stand perfectly well on ...Read more
- Young Master Surpasses His IdolThe Durrell Miller Letters 1935-80. Edited by Ian S. MacNiven. New Directions. 528 pp. ****1/2 In 1935, 23-year-old Lawrence Durrell wrote Henry Miller a fan letter about his novel Tropic of Cancer, which he had either found discarded in a public lavatory (the story he told) or was lent by a friend. “It strikes me as ...Read more
- ExeuntClea book four in the Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. Dutton. 287 pp. ***** It’s hard to know what to say at the end of the Alexandria Quartet, a “word continuum” that has occupied so much time during an intense period. Reading is a vital part of my life, and for however many weeks it’s been, ...Read more
- The Night Everything ChangedA Single Scene from the Alexandria Quartet Even now that I’ve finished, I continue to be obsessed with the Alexandria Quartet. I would love to know how much Durrell envisioned when he began the work. He had supposedly been planning what he called his Book of the Dead (his early working title) for years, before he ...Read more
- Darley Takes a BreakMountolive volume three of the Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. Faber. 884 pp. ***** The most startling thing about Mountolive is that all of a sudden we have no narrator. Darley—who told his own story in the first volume, then absorbed corrections from Balthazar in the second—is nowhere in evidence, though he’s mentioned occasionally in passing. ...Read more
- He Can’t Get StartedNormal People a Hulu Original Series by Lenny Abramson and Hettie Macdonald. With Daisy Edgar-Jones, Paul Mescal, Desmond Eastwood, Sarah Greene. *** I thought this series would be right up my alley. It’s a coming of age story about a young Irishman who wants to be a writer; we see one year of high school and ...Read more
- You Got It All WrongBalthazar book two of the Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. Faber. 884 pp. $16.95. This is a brilliant idea for a series of novels. Kudos to Lawrence Durrell for even thinking of it. But then for the man who conceived it to have a superb poetic style, an interest in religion and psychology and just about ...Read more
- Making Up for Lost TimeJustine book one of the Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. Faber. 884 pp. $16.99 I’ve always been a book snob and have never read things when everyone else did. I didn’t read The Way of Zen—which changed my life—until my late thirties, though everyone else I knew read it in college. I read my wife’s copy, ...Read more
- Flashing Through TimeWarlight, a novel by Michael Ondaatje. Vintage. 285 pp. $16.95. ***** The Cat’s Table a novel by Michael Ondaatje. Vintage. 265 pp. $15.95. ***** I spent the early weeks of my self-isolation reading Michael Ondaatje. First his latest novel, Warlight, which was a gift from a friend. While I was reading and admiring that, she mentioned that ...Read more
- End of the LineThe Road by John Ehle. University of Tennessee Press. 401 pp. **** I wanted to read the first novel in John Ehle’s mountain series because it’s set in a place I often inhabit (and where I am self-isolating during the pandemic) and because I knew Ehle to be a skillful writer, having reviewed one of his ...Read more
- In RecoveryThe Largesse of the Sea Maiden stories by Denis Johnson. Random House. 207 pp. $17.00. ***1/2 One thing I wonder about people in recovery—especially writers in recovery—is why they have an endless fascination with their period of addiction. It’s the same way people at AA get together and tell stories of their worst fuck-ups. “You think ...Read more
- Mea CulpaThe Land Breakers by John Ehle. New York Review Books. 345 pp $17.95 ***** For six years after my undergraduate career at Duke I lived in Winston-Salem, where I taught at a secondary school and spent every spare moment writing, at first just during vacations, then—beginning in my third year—getting up at 4:50 to write before ...Read more
- Portrait of the Artist as a Young HasidMy Name Is Asher Lev a novel by Chaim Potok. Anchor Books. 369 pp. $15.95. **** When I was looking through Goodreads trying to decide if I wanted to read another Chaim Potok novel, I came across a reviewer who said—about this book, I believe—“Chaim Potok refuses to write a page turner.” I thought that an ...Read more
- Who’s the Killer Now?Clemency a film by Chinonye Chukwu. With Alfre Woodard, Aldis Hodge, Wendell Pierce, Richard Schiff. ***** Clemency is a movie about the brutality of the death penalty. Reviewers have seen it as a character study of the female warden (Alfre Woodard) who carries the penalty out, but it’s much more than that; it takes in the ...Read more
- It Happened in LisbonLike a Fading Shadow a novel by Antonio Munoz Molina. Picador. 312 pp. ****1/2 In 2013, Spanish novelist Antonio Munoz Molina traveled to Lisbon to help his son—who was living there as a freelancer—celebrate his 26th birthday. That marked a return to the city for Munoz Molina; he had gone there in 1987, when his son ...Read more
- Happier Simpler Time?Little Women a film by Greta Gerwig. With Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Meryl Streep. **** I’ll start by admitting that, unlike every woman I’ve spoken to about it, I didn’t read the book. A boy reading such a book in my day—the late fifties and early sixties—would have been weird. ...Read more
- What Violence BegetsQueen and Slim a film by Melina Matsoukas. With Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith, Bokeem Woodbine. Written by Lena Waithe ***** This is a stupendous movie, another absolute must see, by a group of people I hadn’t encountered before (which may be a failing on my part). The acting, directing, and cinematography are all marvelous, but the ...Read more
- Family ReunionThe Irishman a film by Martin Scorsese. With Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Anna Paquin, Ray Romano. ***** Toward the end of The Irishman, the former union boss and mobster Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro) is looking through some photos in a nursing home while a nurse takes his blood pressure. He asks her if she knows ...Read more
- Master and DiscipleThe Gift of Rain a novel by Tan Twan Eng. Weinstein Books. 432 pp. $16.99. **** The Gift of Rain is one of the most affecting novels I’ve read in years; toward the end I was both riveted to and deeply disturbed by what I was reading, so that I could hardly sleep. This is Tan ...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)