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- “Precision and accuracy are necessary for both white and black writers. ‘A black aesthetic’ should not be an excuse for sloppy writing.” — poet and publisher Dudley Randall
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Tag Archives: Mark Helprin
2014 Books Read
2014 was a good reading year. I re-read a lot of favorites, including Rebecca West’s 1200 page Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. There was a fun mix of re-reads and new stuff, of fiction and non-fiction. My year of being … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged 1984, Amongst Women, Anjelica Huston, August Strindberg, books read, E.B. White, England, Evelyn Waugh, friends, George Orwell, Henry James, In Cold Blood, Inherent Vice, Ireland, John Cassavetes, John McGahern, Love Streams, Mark Helprin, Mark Twain, Patrick O'Brian, Rebecca West, Roger Angell, Seamus Heaney, Sweden, Truman Capote, Wales, war
9 Comments
Snapshots
— My new nephew is now here among us on earth, and I haven’t met him yet, but I have seen pictures and have received no less than 152 texts in the last four days from my brother to all … Continue reading
Posted in Personal
Tagged Cate Blanchett, family, Mark Helprin, snapshots, Supernatural, Woody Allen
11 Comments
Snapshots
— Allison and I, while in Boston, were snowbound in our hotel on Sunday afternoon. We lay in bed and watched the documentary “The Armstrong Lie”, about Lance Armstrong. It’s fascinating and outrageous. We are a little bit obsessed with … Continue reading
Review: Winter’s Tale (2014)
If you’ve been reading me for a while, then you know my feelings about Mark Helprin’s book. So the film pained me. It doesn’t get one bit of it right. Colin Farrell is actually playing the right story, its subtext … Continue reading
9:30 a.m.
It was cold and silvery, the sunlight having not burned off the fog. Everything had a shimmer to it, the city looked like a mirage. I happened to have my camera (my good camera, not my phone) in the car. … Continue reading
2010 Books Read
Round-up of the books I read this year, in the order in which I read them. I am nearly finished with one last book (a collection of stories by Miranda July, given to me by my sister Siobhan for my … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Andrei Tarkovsky, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Annie Proulx, books read, Dava Sobel, David O. Selznick, David Thomson, E.M. Forster, Elia Kazan, Ellen Terry, Emily Dickinson, Ernest Hemingway, Evelyn Waugh, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fred Astaire, Fyodor Dostoevsky, George Bernard Shaw, George Orwell, George Washington, Gouverneur Morris, Ireland, Jane Langton, Jaws, Joan Blondell, John Banville, John McGahern, Mark Helprin, Orson Welles, Oscar Wilde, Peter Bogdanovich, Rebecca West, Roman Polanski, Ron Chernow, Russia, Serbia, Shakespeare, Shirley Jackson, Stefan Zweig, Sylvia Beach, Tana French, Tennessee Williams, Warren Beatty
37 Comments
Winter’s Tale, by Mark Helprin
Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale works as a philosophical contemplation of hard-to-grasp ephemeral things as: time, winter, the growth of cities, love, death, progress, language, machines. It is also a story about New York, at the turn of two centuries (and … Continue reading
The Changeability Of Manhattan: Winter’s Tale, by Mark Helprin
I’m reading Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin. Mitchell raved about it to me (before ABANDONING ME, that is), using the words fin de siecle and ancien regime in his ravings, which means 1. Mitchell is an asshole (but at least … Continue reading

