I bought this book and read it because it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. See, it says so right there on the cover: “Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.” Did you know there was a time in our country’s history when black people were bought and sold as property, sometimes by other black people? And did you also know that 15 minutes could save you 15 percent or more on car insurance? Human slavery is deplorable, yes, but at this late date, can it be deplored any more than it has been already? If you have new depths of insight into the hearts and minds of the participants, by all means offer them, but Jones doesn’t have them. Reading The Known World is like reading a history book, albeit with a little more authorial contempt for some of the characters. It’s customary in book reviews to mention authors whose work… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Literature
2013: The Year in Books
These are the books I read in 2013, roughly in the order listed. The ratings are mine. They don’t represent a consensus of opinion. Books of the Year: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen and All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren My Library at LibraryThing Read more →
A Display of Interest, However Shallow
He himself did not care what happened at the house during the day. There was no more reason for her to be curious about his work than for him to be concerned with the groceries, laundry, getting the children to school, and whatever else she did. Yet it would seem rude, almost brutal, to drop the pretense and admit that neither particularly cared what the other was doing. A display of interest, however shallow, made life easier. — Evan Connell, Mr. Bridge Read more →
The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates
“Do not ride your bicycle around the corner,” the mother had told the daughter when she was seven. “Why not!” protested the girl. “Because then I cannot see you and you will fall down and cry and I will not hear you.” “How do you know I’ll fall?” whined the girl. “It is in a book, The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates, all the bad things that can happen to you outside the protection of this house.” “I don’t believe you. Let me see the book.” “It is written in Chinese. You cannot understand it. That is why you must listen to me.” “What are they, then?” the girl demanded. “Tell me the twenty-six bad things.” But the mother sat knitting in silence. “What twenty-six!” shouted the girl. The mother still did not answer her. “You can’t tell me anything because you don’t know! You don’t know anything!” And the girl ran… Read more →
It Is Hard Living Down the Tempers We Are Born With
Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. “Stop!” cried the groaning old man at last, “Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree.” It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so our struggle with them dies away. — Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans Read more →
If You Quote Poetry at My Death, I Will Haunt You
If you know me, and you outlive me, and you want to say something on the occasion of my demise, please do not quote a snippet of poetry or other literary material, e.g., “He did not go gently into that good night.” Or: “I think Wordsworth said it best . . .” Bullshit . . . Wordsworth did not say it best. Wordsworth didn’t know me. You knew me. Go ahead and say something from the heart if you have something. Keep it real. He was not a good person. He had the most appalling social skills, which is why he had no close friends. After his son moved out, he just unraveled like an old sock. I remember at Jackie O’s funeral, her kids — was it just one kid, or both? I think both — read a poem. A poem! That’s when you really know that your life… Read more →
Seeing the Thing Through
Ah, poor fellow!–and Herzog momentarily joined the objective world in looking down on himself. He too could smile at Herzog and despise him. But there still remained the fact. I am Herzog. I have to be that man. There is no one else to do it. After smiling, he must return to his own Self and see the thing through. — Saul Bellow, Herzog Read more →
The Life That Exhibits Itself
“In paths untrodden,” as Walt Whitman marvelously put it. “Escaped from the life that exhibits itself . . .” Oh, that’s a plague, the life that exhibits itself, a real plague! There comes a time when every ridiculous son of Adam wishes to arise before the rest, with all his quirks and twitches and tics, all the glory of his self-adored ugliness, his grinning teeth, his sharp nose, his madly twisted reason, saying to the rest — in an overflow of narcissism which he interprets as benevolence — “I am here to witness. I am come to be your exemplar.” Poor dizzy spook! — Saul Bellow, Herzog Read more →
Seamus Heaney, 1939-2013
The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life. — Seamus Heaney, “Elegy” Related articles In Memoriam Seamus Heaney (text-patterns.thenewatlantis.com) Read more →
Aside
Aerogramme Writers’ Studio: Emily Dickinson Attends a Writing Workshop
Boring a Lot of People For a Long Time
I’ve probably been boring a lot of people for a long time. Strange to find comfort in the idea. There have always been things I felt I must tell them, even if no one listened or understood. — Marilynne Robinson, Gilead Read more →
Happy Fathers Day
I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you. — Marilynne Robinson, Gilead Read more →
A Glutton for Punishment
“You must really be a glutton for punishment,” he said. “A gourmet, actually,” I said. “If it isn’t perfect, I send it back.” — Jonathan Lethem, Gun, with Occasional Music Read more →
Goals for Today
Stop one heart from breaking. Ease one life the aching or cool one pain. Or help one fainting robin unto his nest again. What’s the billing code for that? Read more →
You Sat There All Your Life
The taste of self-inflicted suffering, of an evening trashed in spite, brought curious satisfactions. Other people stopped being real enough to carry blame for how you felt. Only you and your refusal remained. And like self-pity, or like the blood that filled your mouth when a tooth was pulled — the salty ferric juices that you swallowed and allowed yourself to savor — refusal had a flavor for which a taste could be acquired. . . . And if you sat at the dinner table long enough, whether in punishment or in refusal or simply in boredom, you never stopped sitting there. Some part of you sat there all your life. — Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections Read more →
Always Costly
In democratic societies, there exists an urge to do something even when the goal is not precise, a sort of permanent fever that turns to innovations (which) are always costly. — Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1831) Read more →
These People Who See Right Through You
These people who see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you’re making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice. — Marilynne Robinson, Gilead Read more →
Watch Out for the Gospel of the Times
everything is permitted absolute freedom of movement that is, without leaving the cage 2+2 doesn’t make 4: once it made 4 but today nothing is known in this regard — Nicanor Parra, “Watch Out for the Gospel of the Times” Read more →
EppsNet Book Club
Welcome to the EppsNet Book Club! Here’s what we’ve been reading lately . . . Gilead by Marilynne Robinson Gilead is the journal of an old man — a pastor in a small town in Iowa — writing to his young son, whom he intends to read it after his death. He doesn’t know how to get to the point, he complains about his health despite an absence of physical symptoms, he sees everything as a blessing . . . He has no strong convictions — I think this but other people think that and they may have a point. The one strong conviction that he does have, he recants by the end of the book. It’s not a bad book but since the author, Marilynne Robinson, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for it, I feel like I have to say that it’s not a very good book either. Imagine… Read more →
Poetry Madness
Powell’s Books has a Poetry Madness bracket online to determine the Best Poet of All Time. Unfortunately, along with some really obvious omissions, they don’t understand the concept of seeding, so while minor poets face off in a number of first round matchups, there are inexplicable heavyweight pairings like T.S. Eliot vs. Emily Dickinson . . . Read more →