A Canticle for Leibowitz
This is a book I would have really loved in high school. That’s not a criticism per se, but, damn, I wish I’d read this when I was younger. A…
Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior
Mary Gaitskill’s debut story collection is definitely one of the best collections I’ve read this year. It’s a wide range of stories -male and female protagonists, 1st and 3rd person…
The Wisdom of Father Brown
G.K. Chesterton knows his way around the English language. He often makes it do silly things, purely for his own amusement. His Father Brown books, especially, have a sense of…
Djuna Barnes’ “Nightwood” and the virtues of reading good shit you don’t like
Nightwood T.S. Eliot said of Djuna Barnes’ 1936 novel “Nightwood” that “it is so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it”. There’s a poetic…
The Short Stories of Breece D’J Pancake
http://assets.uvamagazine.org/images/uploads/2015/Spring_2015/BreecePancake.jpg Breece D’J Pancake killed himself at 27. Whenever someone who evidences some kind of brilliance kills themselves (or merely meets an untimely end,) it seems difficult to separate the…
Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano and Grading Debut Novels on a Curve
Debut novels are interesting. I’m a big Vonnegut fan. I’m planning to read all of his novels and then get a tattoo of the asshole he drew in Breakfast of…
Tender is the Night and Re-reading Gatsby, or “Yes, Francis, We Know You Want to be Old Money”
I almost didn’t make it through Tender is the Night. I think I only pushed through the god-awful first act because the book is considered Fitzgerald’s best, and I wanted…
Chandler’s “The Big Sleep”: Noir and Homophobia and Slapping Hysterical Women, Oh My…
Ah, the other major detective noir. After reading “The Maltese Falcon,” I rather quickly set my sights on reading Chandler’s pulpy-not-pulp Magnum Opus. I had fun. It’s not my normal…
Reading Log: ‘California Ghost Town Trails’ and the Pleasure of Secret Knowledge
This was a charming little book. It’s badly outdated -don’t use it as a literal guide- but it’s a wonderful history told in a voice that’s interesting not because of…
Reading Log: Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There
My girlfriend picked this up, read it in a day or two, then passed it on to me. I’d never heard of it (or seen the Academy Award-winning movie) and…