Categories
Archives
-
-
-
Recent Posts
- “I don’t like being approached by people who look at me too intensely, who needed something from me that I didn’t have. I don’t represent anything.” — Liz Phair
- “I don’t really know why, but danger has always been an important thing in my life – to see how far I could lean without falling, how fast I could go without cracking up.” — William Holden
- “Some syllables are swords.” — Metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan
- “To me, music is no joke and it’s not for sale.” — Ian MacKaye
- “All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.” — Charlie Chaplin
- 92nd Street Y: April 29th, Liberties panel
- April 2025 Viewing Diary, Supernatural Season 7
- “As a cinematographer, I was always attracted to stories that have the potential to be told with as few words as possible.” — Reed Morano
- March 2025 Viewing Diary, Supernatural Season 8
- “Even though I’m writing about very dark material, it still feels like an escape hatch.” — Olivia Laing
Recent Comments
- Gina in alabama on “Ballet taught me to stay close to style and tone. Literature taught me to be concerned about the moral life.” — Joan Acocella
- sheila on March 2025 Viewing Diary, Supernatural Season 8
- sheila on 92nd Street Y: April 29th, Liberties panel
- mutecypher on 92nd Street Y: April 29th, Liberties panel
- Pat on March 2025 Viewing Diary, Supernatural Season 8
- sheila on March 2025 Supernatural Viewing Diary Season 10, working backwards
- sheila on March 2025 Supernatural Viewing Diary Season 10, working backwards
- Adèle on March 2025 Supernatural Viewing Diary Season 10, working backwards
- sheila on March 2025 Viewing Diary, Supernatural Season 8
- sheila on March 2025 Viewing Diary, Supernatural Season 8
- sheila on March 2025 Viewing Diary, Supernatural Season 8
- Katie on Close-up: Bud White in “LA Confidential”
- LYRIEISYELLING on February 2025 Viewing Diary
- Lyrie on March 2025 Viewing Diary, Supernatural Season 8
- Lyrie on March 2025 Viewing Diary, Supernatural Season 8
- sheila on March 2025 Viewing Diary, Supernatural Season 8
- Lyrie on March 2025 Viewing Diary, Supernatural Season 8
- sheila on March 2025 Viewing Diary, Supernatural Season 8
- Pat on March 2025 Viewing Diary, Supernatural Season 8
- mutecypher on “I trust contrariness. I simply rebelled at being commanded.” — Seamus Heaney
-
Tag Archives: E.M. Forster
Happy Birthday, Herman Melville
Herman Melville was born on this day in 1819. Moby-Dick is one of my all-time favorite books (my essays and excerpts are linked at the bottom of this post) – so I figured I wouldn’t just re-hash that old territory … Continue reading
Posted in On This Day, writers
Tagged E.M. Forster, Hart Crane, Herman Melville, John Huston, Michael Schmidt, Moby Dick, Nathaniel Hawthorne
3 Comments
The Books: “Howards End” (E.M. Forster)
Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction: Howards End – by E.M. Forster I wrote yesterday a bit about Howards End. This book feels like it becomes more relevant with each passing day. Aside from the intricacies of the characters lives – … Continue reading
The Books: “A Room with a View” (E.M. Forster)
Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction: A Room With a View – by E.M. Forster I saw the movie before I read the book – this is the case with all of Forster, actually. I came to Forster late – I … Continue reading
“Feel this teapot.”
Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot … Feel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain’t going to be no tea. — Katherine Mansfield, journal entry, May 1917
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
Jessa Crispin has an interesting interview with Peter Boxall, editor of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I loved what Boxall said at the end: Having benefited from an extraordinary number of emails and letters as well as … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce
Tagged 1984, A Prayer for Owen Meany, A Tale of Two Cities, A.S. Byatt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Alice in Wonderland, Amongst Women, Animal Farm, Annie Proulx, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, At Swim-Two-Birds, Atonement, Cat's Eye, Catch-22, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, D.H. Lawrence, Don DeLillo, E.M. Forster, Edgar Allan Poe, Edna O'Brien, Emily Bronte, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Finnegans Wake, Flann O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor, Frankenstein, Franny and Zooey, George Eliot, George Orwell, Great Expectations, Gulliver's Travels, Handmaid's Tale, Herman Melville, House of Leaves, Hunter S. Thompson, Ian McEwan, In Cold Blood, J.D. Salinger, J.R.R. Tolkien, James Ellroy, Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, Jeanette Winterson, John Irving, John McGahern, John Steinbeck, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Heller, Kazuo Ishiguro, Leo Tolstoy, Lewis Carroll, Lord of the Rings, Margaret Atwood, Mark Danielewski, Mary Shelley, Master and Margarita, Middlemarch, Mikhail Bulgakov, Moby Dick, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Notes From the Underground, Possession, Pride and Prejudice, Primo Levi, Sexing the Cherry, Stephen King, The Catcher In the Rye, The Country Girls, The Great Gatsby, The Hobbit, The Passion, The Shipping News, The Things They Carried, Thomas Mann, Tim O'Brien, Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Ulysses, Underworld, Vladimir Nabokov, Wuthering Heights
9 Comments
mud-covered universe
“Ulysses is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud. It is an inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed where sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell.” … Continue reading
Fragments
I was so upset reading The Children of the Arbat this morning that it’s put me in a melancholic mood all day. I’m having a bad day. At around 7 a.m., after reading for a couple hours (and it was … Continue reading
Summer Reading
… of the stars. I found this very enjoyable reading. What are “stars” reading this summer? Looks like pretty much everybody is reading Harry Potter (except Harold Bloom who is spending the summer re-reading the god-awful canon of the god-awful … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Cary Grant, Children of the Arbat, E.M. Forster, Edmund Burke, England, fiction, France, John Adams, Memoirs, nonfiction, politics, Red Sox, Rosalind Russell, Russia, Stephen King, Thomas Jefferson
4 Comments
EM Forster: “an inverted Victorianism”
“Ulysses is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud. It is an inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed where sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell.” … Continue reading
Posted in James Joyce
Tagged E.M. Forster, Ulysses
Comments Off on EM Forster: “an inverted Victorianism”
Only Connect
An absolutely terrific essay by Roger Ebert on “two conversations” in the film Howards End. I loved that movie … which was quite extraordinary, considering my passionate feelings about that book. Not only did they “get” all the characters, and … Continue reading