Books
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Two weeks ago, I wrote some admiring remarks about a little-known post-WWII film called East Side, West Side. I said then that I was sufficiently impressed and intrigued by the film that I intended to read the novel upon which it is based, but that since ES,WS has evaporated into the mists of time, I…
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This year's list is incomplete. During the Vermont summer, I neglected to keep good records. My porous brain can't bring to mind all I read in June, July, August, and September. In addition, it's a list of books only, so no periodicals (New Yorker, New York Review of Books), Northern Forests) or newspapers. Abdulrazak Gurnah,…
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Richard Powell's novel The Philadelphian has not worn well. It was a best-seller in 1956 and was made into a "blockbuster" film, starring Paul Newman, in 1959. We watched the movie (called, for some reason, The Young Philadelphians) on TCM and I was sufficiently intrigued that I ordered up the long-forgotten novel through our blessedly-efficient…
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Before I forget, I would like to put on the record the most memorable student sentence that I received during my entire 50+ years of teaching literature: "After Gregor Samsa was transformed into a large insect, his lifestyle changed."
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I read James' Portrait of a Lady in 1963 but never again until last week, so there had been a gap of almost three score years. During the interim, glaciers have melted, continents have subducted and conventional notions about what constitutes a "lady" have shifted quite marvelously. After such an interval, it's not disgraceful for…
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Through the continuing miracle of TCM, we watched Divorcee, a 1930 "pre-Code" drama of marriage and adultery. It's a film that was shocking in its own time and still carries a bit of an edge. Jerry Martin (Norma Shearer) and Ted Martin (Chester Morris) attempt to create a marriage of perfect equals, but Ted strays. There's…
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My new reading project: novels set in Brooklyn. There are, I've already discovered, tons of them. I wonder how long I will last at this endeavor. Will it be a sterile or a fruitful exercise? How is it that I never read, until this very week, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? It's certainly the best…
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I decided to keep a record of the books that I read this past 2021. It's in roughly chronological order, starting just about a year ago. It's an eclectic bunch; after years of being forced to be a specialist I've reverted to my natural dilettantism. I've probably forgotten some books, both my record-keeping and my…
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I've given over the last week or ten days to Lewis Grassic Gibbon's A Scots Quair and I'm very pleased to have done so. And I'm embarrassed that I've only now read this strange brooding wondrous series of novels. How could I not have known? For those equally as ignorant as I, the Quair is…