CRITICAL APPRAISALS: JOYCE / BECKETT // ASHBERY /// MAKIN – Part Four
Language is a toy, something played with, subverted, parodied, and explored. Continue reading CRITICAL APPRAISALS: JOYCE / BECKETT // ASHBERY /// MAKIN – Part Four
Tag: books
CRITICAL APPRAISALS: JOYCE / BECKETT // ASHBERY /// MAKIN – Part 3
Yet even an anti-novel is still a novel. Continue reading CRITICAL APPRAISALS: JOYCE / BECKETT // ASHBERY /// MAKIN – Part 3
CRITICAL APPRAISALS: JOYCE / BECKETT // ASHBERY /// MAKIN – Part Two
Both Ulysses and the Wake expose the frailties and chaos of language. Continue reading CRITICAL APPRAISALS: JOYCE / BECKETT // ASHBERY /// MAKIN – Part Two
CRITICAL APPRAISALS: JOYCE / BECKETT // ASHBERY /// MAKIN – Part 1
Richard Makin’s trilogy (Work, Dwelling, Mourning) represents a landmark achievement in (post)modern literature, one that avoids easy classification or explanation. Continue reading CRITICAL APPRAISALS: JOYCE / BECKETT // ASHBERY /// MAKIN – Part 1
Espresso Shots: Nohow On: Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho, by Samuel Beckett
Nohow On is about nothing. But like Jerry Seinfeld said, “Even nothing is something.” Continue reading Espresso Shots: Nohow On: Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho, by Samuel Beckett
Espresso Shots: Desert Tiles by Mike Corrao
Body horror collides with a kind of digital mysticism. Continue reading Espresso Shots: Desert Tiles by Mike Corrao
Forgotten Classics: The Freaks of Mayfair (1916) by E.F. Benson
The Freaks of Mayfair offers pleasant distraction with humane portraits of freaks, faddists, climbers, and fakers. Continue reading Forgotten Classics: The Freaks of Mayfair (1916) by E.F. Benson
Translation Tuesdays: Samuel Beckett: The Complete Short Prose, 1929 – 1989, edited and with an Introduction and Notes by S. E. Gontarski
Beckett exists in a kind of Irish Modernist Mount Rushmore beside other iconic writers like Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, and James Joyce. Continue reading Translation Tuesdays: Samuel Beckett: The Complete Short Prose, 1929 – 1989, edited and with an Introduction and Notes by S. E. Gontarski
Commonplace Book: Coriolanus and the mob
“With every minute you change a mind,
And call him noble that was now your hate,
Him vile that was your garland.” Continue reading Commonplace Book: Coriolanus and the mob
Critic’s Notebook: The Wake without training wheels
Jack Burton: I don’t get this at all. I thought Lo Pan— David Lo Pan: Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to “get it!” Big Trouble in Little China (John Carpenter, 1986) Earlier in my life, I read Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses, all by James Joyce. This year I decided to read Finnegans Wake, a novel notorious for its inaccessibility. Like The Cantos by Ezra Pound, it is a text many know, few read, and less understand. While the Wake is difficult, this shouldn’t be seen as a … Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: The Wake without training wheels
The Driftless Area Review 