When the concept of evil has been dissected, it’s traditionally been under the supple lenses of art and religion rather than science. A rare exception is Lyall Watson’s Dark Nature, which deploys the tools of anthropology, evolutionary biology, even astrophysics, leaving no stone, earthbound or otherwise, unturned. Naturally, one notion that comes up is that [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Nabokov’
Dante 2020-3: Cleansing as Carnival, Tree as Anchor.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Beatrice, Dante, Dante's Inferno, Divine Comedy, Earthly Paradise, Eunoe, Lethe, Lolita, Lucifer, Nabokov, Nimrod, Purgatorio, Purgatory, Salvador Dalí, terza rime, William Blake on January 16, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Twice in recent days, I’ve posted stages in a developing idea about Dante’s Divine Comedy. The work is coming up on its 700th birthday, yet its impact seems greater than ever, and we have to ask why. My own answer appeared first, in different form, in Southwest Review. Now, we climb towards salvation, led on [...]
Tiny Shocks: Uncovering the Reductive Plot of James Wood’s How Fiction Works
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Ann Quin, B.S. Johnson, Breathless (1960), Breathless (1983), Chekhov, Cthulhu, Curtis White, Flaubert, G.I. Joe, Hamlet, Henry James, How Fiction Works, James Wood, Jean Luc Godard, Jean-François Lyotard, John Gardner, John Ruskin, Last Tango in Paris, Les Carabiniers, Madame Bovary, Nabokov, ostranenie (enstrangement), Saul Bellow, The 400 Blows, The Concept of Character in Fiction, The Middle Mind, Theodore Adorno, Theory of Prose, Three Blondes and Death, Tripticks, Viktor Shklovsky, Watchmen, William H. Gass, Yuriy Tarnawsky on January 31, 2010 | 42 Comments »
[Update: As if this post weren't long enough, there's now a Part 2.] On January 22, I read Shya Scanlon’s post “The Dull King”; on January 25 I read his second post “Cover Your Tracks.” Both were about reading James Wood’s How Fiction Works. Before that I’d heard of James Wood but hadn’t read anything [...]
Cover your tracks
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Balzac, finger print, Flaubert, free indirect style, James Wood, Nabokov on January 25, 2010 | 32 Comments »
I’m (still) reading How Fiction Works, by James Wood. The entire book is built around a concept he calls “free indirect style,” which essentially refers to a prose style for which Gustave Flaubert is largely responsible. One of the hallmarks of this style is that the language is most often experienced by the reader to [...]
Dmitri Nabokov 1, Dying Wish 0
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Augustus, Brod, deathbed requests, Depp, Dickens, Dickinson, Kafka, Nabokov, Thompson, Virgil, Zumas on October 17, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Vladimir Nabokov made his wife promise to burn his unfinished last novel, The Original of Laura, upon his death. But the manuscript, written on 138 index cards, remained in a Swiss safe-deposit box for over three decades. His son and sole heir, Dmitri, 75, has finally decided to let the world have a look. Knopf [...]
-
Authors
-
John Madera
-
John Dermot Woods
-
Ryan W. Bradley
-
Michael Leong
-
Greg Gerke
-
Stacy Muszynski
-
A D Jameson
-
Tim Jones-Yelvington
-
Rachel Swirsky
-
Edward Mullany
-
Aya Karpinska
-
Paul Kincaid
-
davis schneiderman
-
Amber Sparks
-
Tim Horvath
-
John Domini
-
Elaine Castillo
-
Curtis White
-
Paula Bomer
-
James Tadd Adcox
-
Nick Francis Potter
-
Brian Kubarycz
-
Gabriel Blackwell
-
Janey Smith
-
Matty Byloos
-
J/J Hastain
-
Greg Hunter
-
Jeff Bursey
-
Paul Griffin
-
Chris Lites
-
-
Top Posts
-
Recent Comments
- Theory of Prose & better writing (ctd): The New Sincerity, Tao Lin, & “differential perceptions” | HTMLGIANT on Tao Lin, Richard Yates
- Fulcanelli on Critical
- John Domini on THE SOT-WEED FACTOR, A Duet: Part II; in which we discuss foundlings and feminists, the exhaustion of forms, Twin Peaks, and how literature can’t compensate for a lack of toilet paper.
- Purity of Essence on THE SOT-WEED FACTOR, A Duet: Part II; in which we discuss foundlings and feminists, the exhaustion of forms, Twin Peaks, and how literature can’t compensate for a lack of toilet paper.
