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Tag Archives: essays
Stuff I’ve Been Reading
Been a while since I’ve done one of these. — The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick I had never read her before. I was familiar with her as “Robert Lowell’s wife” – she shows up repeatedly in his correspondence with … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged essays, fiction, Mae West, nonfiction, stuff I've been reading, The Bridge Across Forever
9 Comments
2021 Books Read
I lived at three addresses this year. I moved twice. In the middle of a pandemic. It’s been a year of upheaval, transition, as well as endurance. For most of this year, the majority of my stuff was in storage. … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Austria, Balkans, Billy Wilder, Biography, books read, Cary Grant, Croatia, Czeslaw Milosz, David McCullough, Dubravka Ugrešić, Edvard Radzinsky, Elinor Lipman, England, essays, Eve Babitz, Evelyn Waugh, fiction, Germany, Guillermo del Toro, Hitler, Howard Hawks, Ireland, Italy, Liz Phair, Memoirs, Nancy Lemann, Nick Tosches, nonfiction, Olivia Laing, Poland, politics, Robert Conquest, Robert Kaplan, Russia, Sergei Kirov, Stalin, Sweden, Thomas Mann, Tom Wolfe, Vladimir Nabokov, war, WWII, Yugoslavia
1 Comment
2020 Books Read
What a year, huh. What a dumpster-fire year. I read a lot, mostly in the mornings, and it helped create rituals for the days, which often seemed endlessly the same, interchangeable. I read a lot of long and challenging books … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Austria, ballet, Ballets Russes, Belfast, Biography, books read, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Czeslaw Milosz, dance, Dubravka Ugrešić, Elinor Lipman, Elizabeth Bishop, Eminem, essays, Ezra Pound, fiction, H.D., Hannah Arendt, Hitler, Ireland, Jane Austen, Jean Arthur, Marcel Proust, Nick Tosches, nonfiction, Olivia Laing, poetry, Poland, politics, Rebecca West, Robert Kaplan, Roman empire, Russia, Ryszard Kapuściński, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shirley Jackson, Stalin, true crime, Ukraine, war, WWII, Yugoslavia
38 Comments
Excerpt from Slouching Towards Bethlehem: ‘John Wayne: A Love Story’, by Joan Didion
For John Wayne’s Birthday A second excerpt from the essay collection: Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays (FSG Classics), by Joan Didion This is one of the best things written about John Wayne. It’s not just an essay about who he was … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Books, On This Day
Tagged Elvis Presley, essays, Joan Didion, John Wayne, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
46 Comments
Bookshelf Tour #11
Renegades, iconoclasts, “new journalism” and gonzo journalism. Individualists, all. Irreplaceable, all. The world wouldn’t know what to do with such voices now, and they didn’t know what to do with such voices then. None of them really “fit.” They are … Continue reading
The Books: Baseball: A Literary Anthology; Excerpt from Baseball When the Grass Was Real, “James ‘Cool Papa’ Bell”, by Donald Honig
A re-post for Cool Papa Bell’s birthday On the essays shelf (yes, there are still more books to excerpt in my vast library. I can’t seem to stop this excerpts-from-my-library project. I started it in 2006!) NEXT BOOK: Baseball: A … Continue reading
The Books: Vamps & Tramps; “Love Poetry,” by Camille Paglia
NEXT BOOK on the essays shelf: Vamps & Tramps: New Essays, by Camille Paglia. Camille Paglia is furious about what has been done to the canon in her lifetime. Furious, I tell you! Her three books (outside of the essay … Continue reading
The Books: Vamps & Tramps; “Alice as Epic Hero,” by Camille Paglia
NEXT BOOK on the essays shelf: Vamps & Tramps: New Essays, by Camille Paglia. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland has been more picked apart and obsessed over than Tolkien’s Ring trilogy. It has been analyzed as political metaphor, cultural/social Victorian-era … Continue reading