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Posts Tagged ‘literature’

vintage García Márquez in short form: Gabriel García Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , , , on September 17, 2007| Leave a Comment »

García Márquez did not win the Nobel Prize for Literature and become Colombia’s favorite son by accident. This book, among his best, anchors his reputation as one of Latin America’s greatest novelists. (more…)

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an uncommonly steady gaze: Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies

Posted in reseña, tagged , , , on September 9, 2007| Leave a Comment »

I didn’t fall in love with this Pulitzer-prize-winning debut until the final chapter, but the glow of this delayed romance now reflects back upon the chapter-long stories that preceded it. Lahiri writes from the space between the old country and the America to which generations of transients have emigrated, ceasing in the process to belong entirely to their origin or their destination. (more…)

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the luxury of tears (Homer: The Iliad, narrated audiobook)

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , , , , , on September 9, 2007| Leave a Comment »

What happens upon earth when the gods make war in heaven? Many cultures have a treasured and conventional answer to this, even those deeply secularized societies that describe celestial violence in scientific language. Homer’s Iliad is one such tale-epic in its scope-that has deeply marked Western civilization down to its roots.

If you listen to just one audiobook this year, it should be George Guidall’s narration of Homer’s The Iliad. (more…)

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grief on ice: Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (Penguin Classics)

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , , on September 8, 2007| 1 Comment »

Forget everything you’ve heard about its obscene girth (1444 pages in my edition). Throw away the popular notion that it’s an impenetrable Russian monster where every character has four different names. You may have other issues that separate you from the epic tale Tolstoy set during Napoleon’s early nineteenth-century invasion of Russia. Whatever they are, get over them already and read this great story, considered by some to be the finest novel ever written. (more…)

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a shining and affirmative thing: Naomi Ragen, Jephthe’s Daughter (Readers Guide Editions)

Posted in reseña, tagged , , on August 31, 2007| Leave a Comment »

It is difficult to categorize this seductive first novelistic offering by Naomi Ragen.

Somewhat sheephishly, this middle-aged, white, male reviewer confesses its tones of over-written girly pop, an aspect that explains its being laid aside half-read for six months before it jumped back into my suitcase and lured me into a hungry, late-night series of readings to finish it. This element of Jephte’s Daughter is most charitably explained as the work of an immature but promising novelist. (more…)

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