Naimisha Forest
Searching for Tom Wolfe
Thinking about the writer Tom Wolfe, who died on May 14, I searched for his name across all my e-books. Up popped some thirty-six, leaving aside Wolfe's own novels and essays, containing a total of 151 references. An interesting fact of probably no relevance, the references were apparently distributed according to some power law. (See . . .
Posted in: charles dickenscultureessaysevolutionary psychologyfictionfilmnew journalismstyletom wolfe
Nothing to beat a good (literary) Western, eh?
Jack Schaefer (1949). “Shane”
"He rode into our valley in the summer of '89. I was a kid then, barely topping the backboard of father's old chuckwagon. I was on the upper rail of our corral, soaking in the late afternoon sun, when I saw him far down the road where it swung into the valley from the open plain beyond."
. . .Cats and Rats: Happy Birthday Ulysses
Today, February 2nd, 2018 marks several big dates in James Joyce world, says Emily Temple in “Ulysses – Good and Bad.”
“This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first appearance of James Joyce’s Ulysses—it was first serialized in The Little Review between March 1918 and December . . .
Posted in: fictionhomerjames joyce
English Humor
In his book on Charles Dickens, G.K. Chesterton says that the figure of the cockney Sam Weller in ‘The Pickwick Papers’ introduces the great subject of all Dickens’ novels, the English people:
"Sam Weller is the great symbol in English literature of the populace peculiar to England. His incessant stream of sane nonsense . . .
Posted in: britaincharles dickenscomedyfiction
Dead men sing no songs
Three men are riding through a dark wood, two common soldiers, and a noble lord.
“My mother told me that dead men sing no songs”, puts in the younger of the soldiers.
“My wet nurse said the same thing”, replies the lord. “Never believe anything you hear at a woman’s tit.”
On reading this, . . .
The R. Wilfer Family
In "Our Mutual Friend" (1864) Dickens lovingly portrays what was then becoming a universal social type, the humble office clerk, although now, 150 years later, apparently destined for extinction, or, at best, a modest Universal Basic Income, by - you know - efficiency, progress, technology, IT, AI, Messrs. Floogle, Fatebait . . .
Posted in: charles dickense-commercefiction
Buying a Smiley
I don't now remember the sequence of clicks that brought me to the Amazon page for John le Carré’s new George Smiley novel “A Legacy of Spies”. Maybe I was set off down that path by one of the several marketing emails the kindly internet titan sends me daily. Or perhaps I was already on the site browsing idly as a . . .
Posted in: e-commercefictionstyle
Cover image credit: http://Pinterest
