“Life is painful, nasty and short – in my case it has only been painful and nasty,” Djuna Barnes 1978-1981 by Hank O’Neal The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith All the Lives We Ever Lived by Katherine Smyth Normandy Stories by Guy de Maupassant Molloy by Samuel Beckett Herman Melville by(…)
– continued – A Way in the World by V.S. Naipaul Burmese Days by George Orwell Death in Venice by Thomas Mann At the Edge of the World by Jean-Vincent Blanchard Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell The Ordeal of Gilbert Finfold by Evelyn Waugh(…)
– continued – Staying On by Paul Scott The Longest Journey by E.M. Forster Where Angels fear to Tread by E.M.Forster Mother’s and Sons by Colm Tóibín A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren New Ways to Kill your Mother by Colm Tóibín The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy(…)
– continued – The life and times of the thunderbolt kid by Bill Bryson Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol Going where by Olga Medvedkova Honeymoon by Patrick Modiano The Door by Magda Szabo The Master by Colm Toibin Watch me: a memoir by Anjelica Huston The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy Heart of the Matter(…)
Twelve days after the death of Gustave Flaubert in May 1880, the official death seals were removed from his door and an inventory of the contents of his rooms was made. Here are a few of his possessions left behind: In the bedroom on the first floor, panama hat top hat red silk cravat 5(…)
Next time a magnanimous impulse impels me to ask – “Can I help in any way?” – I should probably think twice. Here’s the situation: My niece (a personal as well as a world treasure) would be getting married to another (glinting) treasure on June 9th in upstate New York. Of course I wanted to(…)
It began at Ocean Terminal/Berth 46/47/Dock gate 4/Southampton, UK. Once the gangway was withdrawn, it became a universe, and – carelessly – a metaphor for …. well …. the circle of one’s entire life in seven nights and days. Stateroom 6066 rose and fell into the Celtic Sea. “Waves, large and florid as the tail(…)
Once the freshly washed laundry has been pulled from the washer and carried across the laundry room, it gets stuffed into a dryer. No big deal. Just now, though, as I loaded wet teal-blue sheets, underwear, dishtowels, socks, cloth table napkins and more, hand-over-fist, I gripped what felt like a scissors buried inside a twisted(…)
Your downy head against my cheek, your toasty bottom resting in the palm of my hand while your miniature fist surrounds my index finger all morning, all afternoon, until night falls face down across Los Angeles. Then, into evening. Awake. Asleep. Sometimes in between. A choo-choo train of gas toots, a tremulous sigh, your grip(…)
Dear Micah, I’m leaving tomorrow morning at dawn to fly to LA to (finally) meet you. You’re one month and seven days old. I’m … eight hundred sixty-eight months and three days old. In case we don’t find much that we have in common, we surely will find a few strong links to each other.(…)
