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Tag Archives: fiction
“The ability to think for one’s self depends upon one’s mastery of the language.” — Joan Didion
It’s her birthday today. Someone said that Didion’s (seemingly) simple sentences are like a perfect puzzle. If you remove one line from a paragraph, everything falls apart. Her writing is that well-constructed. She was a notoriously painstaking self-editor. She would … Continue reading
“I thought girls in their teens might like to read [Anne of Green Gables], that was the only audience I hoped to reach.” — L.M. Montgomery
As with Sylvia Plath, my relationship with Lucy Maud Montgomery has spanned the entirety of my life. It graduated from a childhood voracious yearning to read all the books immediately to a longer period when I “grew out of them”, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Anne of Green Gables, Canada, Emily of New Moon, fiction, L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle
4 Comments
“I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals.” — Jonathan Swift
“When a man of true Genius appears in the World, you may know him by this infallible Sign, that all the Dunces are in Conspiracy against him.” — Jonathan Swift I don’t have much time to read for pleasure these … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Alexander Pope, Charles Lamb, Charlotte Bronte, Dr. Samuel Johnson, fiction, Gulliver's Travels, H.L. Mencken, Ireland, Irish poetry, Jane Eyre, Jonathan Swift, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Rebecca West, Robert Graves, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats
12 Comments
“Well, if I can’t be happy, I can be useful, perhaps.” — Louisa May Alcott
“November is the most disagreeable month in the whole year,” said Meg, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frostbitten garden. “That’s the reason I was born in it,” observed Jo pensively, quite unconscious of the … Continue reading
“[I wish] to trace the gradual action of ordinary causes rather than exceptional.” — George Eliot
“What do I think of Middlemarch? What do I think of glory?” — Emily Dickinson I came to George Eliot late. As in, during the lifespan of this blog. I read Middlemarch (more like devoured it) in 2005, and wrote … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Christopher Hitchens, Emily Dickinson, fiction, George Eliot, Jeanette Winterson, Joan Acocella, L.M. Montgomery, W.H. Auden
2 Comments
“Excessive consciousness is a disease.” Happy Birthday, Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you. You may say I’m not worth bothering with; in that case, I can say exactly the same to you. We are talking seriously. And if … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster, fiction, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From the Underground
4 Comments
“let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.” — Sylvia Plath
It’s her birthday today. She always hated her birthdays, “looked forward” to them with grim white-knuckling determination. I have “had a relationship” with her my whole life. I discovered her at 15, like a lot of girls do, and took … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Music, On This Day, writers
Tagged fiction, Janet Malcolm, poetry, Sylvia Plath
4 Comments
“My worst is all out in the open. It makes it necessary for people to tell you about themselves.” — Katherine Dunn
“I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out.” -Katherine Dunn It’s her birthday today. In 2009, a news … Continue reading
“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” — Oscar Wilde
It’s his birthday today. One of my heroes. His mother, Jane Speranza Francesca Wilde (aka Lady Wilde, aka “Speranza”) was an incredible woman, in the Irish literary history canon, and there before her son. (She has a cameo in a … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, Theatre, writers
Tagged fiction, Ireland, Irish poetry, Oscar Wilde, Richard Ellmann, Seamus Heaney
22 Comments
“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
So you see that old libel that we were cynics and skeptics was nonsense from the beginning. On the contrary we were the great believers. — F. Scott Fitzgerald, “My Generation” It’s his birthday today. First off, here’s a piece … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Baz Luhrmann, essays, F. Scott Fitzgerald, fiction, The Great Gatsby
20 Comments