Reading Journal

“The Silence” by Don DeLillo: Electromagnetic Pulses and Voiceless Narration

Don DeLillo’s "The Silence," is a strange novel featuring an electromagnetic pulse and empty narration

2022-01-29
On Literature, Books Reading Journal

Cynthia Ozick’s novel “Trust”: a 1400-word Summary

A summary of Cynthia Ozick’s "Trust", being the story of a peculiar, nameless narrator seeking the reasons for her lack of name and lack of a father.

2021-12-29
On Literature, Books Reading Journal

Reading well an excerpt from Cynthia Ozick’s novel “Trust”

An excerpted passage from the 1966 novel "Trust" by Cynthia Ozick, dripping with the poetry and squalor of Rimbaud.

2021-12-19
Reading Journal

Cynthia Ozick’s “Trust”: Exegesis | Tom Hanks on Jimmy Kimmel Live

Ruminations on Cynthia Ozick’s knotty, profound prose counterposed to some armchair commentary on Tom Hanks’ eminently forgettable appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel Live.

2021-11-07
Reading Journal Viewing Journal

Satire or Misanthropy? “Solar,” by Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan’s 2010 novel “Solar” is a misanthropic retelling of ten years in the life of erstwhile Nobel Prize recipient Michael Beard

2021-05-23
On Literature, Books Reading Journal

Affecting Song and W.E.B. Du Bois’ “Souls of Black Folk”

Each chapter of W.E.B. Du Bois’ “The Souls of Black Folk” begins with an excerpt of verse and a few bars of music, begging the question why this song?

2021-03-31
On Literature, Books Reading Journal

Harriet Jacobs’ “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”

Harriet Jacobs’ “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” tells of her life in and escape from the ‘Demon Slavery,’ and its nonpareil powers of corruption.

2021-02-28
Reading Journal On Literature, Books

“Up From Slavery”: Booker T. Washington’s words

Booker T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery” promotes a vocational training for blacks imbued with Christian virtue. Is W.E.B. Du Bois’ critique of it justified?

2021-02-18
Reading Journal On Literature, Books

Coming to Booker T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery”

The circumstances of my purchase and knowledge of “Up From Slavery,” Booker T. Washington’s most famous autobiography

2021-02-10
Reading Journal On Literature, Books

Reading Journal: Assembling Dinosaurs, “War and Peace”

A glorious night when I just wanted to keep reading: first, 25 pages of Lukas Rieppel’s “Assembling the Dinosaur”; then Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”, concluding Volume III; a feast of the undeveloped imagination.

2021-01-24
Reading Journal On Literature, Books

Anna Seghers’ “Transit”: Profound Unknowing

In Anna Seghers’ novel “Transit,” no one really knows who the other is. The reader is never certain of who the narrator really is.

2020-12-15
On Literature, Books Reading Journal

George Saunders’ “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline”

George Saunders’ short story collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, was born in a minimum security prison in central Pennysylvania

2020-09-17
Reading Journal On Literature, Books

Willa Cather’s “Death Comes for the Archbishop”

A novel of religious devotion genuinely spiritual without falling into the mirthless repetition of ecclesiastical doctrine

2020-06-11
On Literature, Books Reading Journal

Notes on Lampedusa’s novel “The Leopard”

Idle reflections on The Leopard, by Giuseppe de Lampedusa, which narrates several events in the life and afterlife of a 19th-century Sicilian noble

2020-04-23
On Literature, Books Reading Journal

Krasnahorkai’s “The Last Wolf”

A reading journal entry on Lázló Krasnahorkai’s “book” The Last Wolf, which is really two small books.

2020-02-26
On Literature, Books Reading Journal