Writer and software engineer in the US Midwest. I enjoy poetry, horror, some f/sf, some mystery, some literary fiction (but not the kind where the main character is a professor and nothing happens).
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![Edwin Morgan: Rites of passage (1976, Carcanet New Press [Chester Springs, Pa. : Distributed in the U.S. by Dufour Editions])](/images/covers/4f400f13-ce0a-4e82-8b17-c7aba57d0720.jpeg)
In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science …
The story of John, a fourteen-year-old boy whose stepfather is a Pentecostal minister in Harlem …
Like the protagonist, John, I grew up in an ultra-religious Christian household. If you don’t have that background, this novel might not speak as directly and intimately to you as it does to me. I call John the protagonist, but there are multiple viewpoints, including John’s preacher stepfather, his reprobate aunt, and his mother. The story branches off from a church service into their various sins and sufferings, past and present. There are no easy answers here, only understanding. I cried more than once, sometimes while also laughing in recognition.
Like the protagonist, John, I grew up in an ultra-religious Christian household. If you don’t have that background, this novel might not speak as directly and intimately to you as it does to me. I call John the protagonist, but there are multiple viewpoints, including John’s preacher stepfather, his reprobate aunt, and his mother. The story branches off from a church service into their various sins and sufferings, past and present. There are no easy answers here, only understanding. I cried more than once, sometimes while also laughing in recognition.
The story of John, a fourteen-year-old boy whose stepfather is a Pentecostal minister in Harlem in 1935, as he struggles …
The story of John, a fourteen-year-old boy whose stepfather is a Pentecostal minister in Harlem in 1935, as he struggles …
"A Queer History of the United States is groundbreaking and accessible. It looks at how American culture has shaped the …
Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author Nadia Bulkin's sophomore collection Issues With Authority drenches the reader in a sensory overload of power, …
Hugo Balls Tagebauchaufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1914 bis 1921 sind nicht nur Zeugnis der Zürcher …
Pebbles of brilliance in a muckheap of piety. Not worth the time I gave it.
Hugo Balls Tagebauchaufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1914 bis 1921 sind nicht nur Zeugnis der Zürcher Dada-Bewegung, sondern auch eines deutschen …
Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author Nadia Bulkin's sophomore collection Issues With Authority drenches the reader in a sensory overload of power, …
A masterful translation of one of the great novels of the 20th century
Nothing …
The Master and Margarita is horror, it’s comedy, it’s surrealism, it’s philosophy. And of course it’s satire—satire of Stalinist Russia, but also of any corrupt, fascist bureaucracy.
One scene that will stay with me takes place at Satan’s ball, where Margarita is introduced to a number of damned souls. Among them is a young woman who worked in a cafe, was made pregnant by the owner, and smothered the baby. Margarita asks, “And where is the owner of the cafe?” He’s not there, but obviously both Margarita and the author think he should be. (Later, when Satan owes Margarita a favor, she uses it to intercede for this woman.)
A masterful translation of one of the great novels of the 20th century
Nothing in the whole of literature …
Hugo Balls Tagebauchaufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1914 bis 1921 sind nicht nur Zeugnis der Zürcher …
There’s an awful lot about Catholicism and Protestantism and that’s tedious. I wasn’t expecting so much arid theology in this book.
Hugo Balls Tagebauchaufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1914 bis 1921 sind nicht nur Zeugnis der Zürcher …
Ball writes of Dada, as he’s helping create the art movement, “There is a danger that only our mistakes are new.”
If I made one mistake that was new, I would consider that an advancement of art.
Hugo Balls Tagebauchaufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1914 bis 1921 sind nicht nur Zeugnis der Zürcher …
I should imagine that tattooing was originally a hieratic art. If poets had to cut their poems or only their archetypal images into their own flesh, they would probably produce less. On the other hand, it would be more difficult for them to circumvent the original idea of publication as a form of self-exposure. Many lyric poets too—I won't mention any names—would be totally unmasked if their human frailties were revealed. So one should look to see if books are ink-stained or tattooed. And if beauty depends on clothes or is burned in the flesh.
Hugo Balls Tagebauchaufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1914 bis 1921 sind nicht nur Zeugnis der Zürcher …
Ball gives some time to building up Kandinsky as the artistic genius of the age, then says, “It was inevitable that we should meet each other.” In case you were worried about Ball’s self-confidence.
