In an earlier review of books from my 2013 reading list, I looked at poetry by one of North Carolina’s best writers, Fred Chappell. This next installment looks at one of his finest novels, the poetic and (one guesses) semi-autobiographical Brighten the Corner Where You Are. In a way, to call this work a novel is to debase it. Chappell is […]
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Happy Father’s Day: "The Day Daddy Died"
Today is Father’s Day, and S&R would like to wish a happy one to America’s dads. At the same time, and in the contrary spirit that often typifies what we do around here, I’d like to be the one who acknowledges that our relationships with our fathers are often less than we’d hope for. Frankly, […]
ArtSunday: What to see, where it is, how to get there…
The review for my most recent completed book from the 2013 reading list has been giving me fits. I finished this book several days ago – but it’s not, as my wife Lea commented, the sort of book one generally reads straight through. But I did, so here I am. In a typically whimsical moment, I put a guidebook on my […]
ArtSunday: Truth and beauty and death…and hope…
The 2013 reading list‘s next work is Chinua Achebe’s 1987 novel Anthills of the Savannah. Achebe, whom many critics would cite as Africa’s most distinguished novelist and man of letters, died in March of this year, leaving behind a body of work that gives both testimony of the African experience and explores the author’s personal history. In the […]
ArtSunday: If everything is possible, is anything possible…?
As promised earlier this week, this book review from my 2013 reading list looks at Professor Arthur C. Danto’s series of lectures on fine art (part of the Mellon series), Contemporary Art and the Pale of History, published as part of the Bollingen Series by Princeton University Press as After The End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. I go […]
WordsDay: Postmodernist Xerism at its most discontentedly hopeful…
Another “now appearing in relief” review here as I finish the complex and engrossing After the End of Art by Arthur C. Danto – a book that I will review this weekend and that is proving in its reading that good scholarly writing is as much its own reward in the way it stretches our thinking as […]
ArtSunday: You can take the boy out of the working class, but can you take the working class out of the boy?
As I’ve noted before, I grew up working class in the South. My neighborhood, my school, my family and friends, it all oscillated between “redneck” and “white trash,” and yes, there’s a difference. I wrote not long ago about the challenges facing those of us trying to climb the socio-economic ladder when nothing in our upbringing […]
Maira Kalman’s The Principles of Uncertainty: an appreciation of New York and New Yorkishness by a New Yorker
Maira Kalman’s collage/slam book/illustrated diary The Principles of Uncertainty probably deserves better than it’s going to get here. This latest completed read from my 2013 reading list has put-up job written (and drawn) all over it. While this book has charm, it also has smarm in abundance. Only a New Yorker with “the right connections” – in publishing, in society, in […]
Beautifully horrible, horribly beautiful: Botkin’s Lost Tales
A quick turnaround with the next book from the 2013 reading list. This time I ventured into a new area: picture books. No, I haven’t decided to re-read The Runaway Bunny or The Cat in the Hat (although they’re both very worthy of repeated perusal in their own right – and for the pleasurable memories they’d trigger for me of reading them to […]
WordsDay: Articles of faith…
I returned to the history genre for the next book in the 2013 reading list – or so I thought. The Road to Salem is a “constructed” memoir – historian and archivist Adelaide Fries (a descendant of the original Moravian settlers she writes about) tells, though the use of the autobiography of Anna Catharina Antes- Kalberlahn/Reuter/Heinzmann/Ernst (yep, she was […]
ArtSunday: Sweet Jane…and the problems of writing…
And so we come to Jane Austen. Be forewarned. I have read each of Austen’s novels at least 10 times – some more. I wrote my master’s thesis on Austen’s novels (using Rogerian theory as a device to explain the social integration problems of each heroine – and, by the way, I would argue, as do some other scholars, […]
WordsDay: Maugham’s the word…
The 2013 book list is moving along at its own steady pace as I complete Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (a book I’ve read about a dozen times and am savoring as I plan a long piece on what for me is the great Jane’s most problematic work), so I’ve decided to write something about a book I finished late last […]
Unsolicited museum review: Ice Age Art, at the British Museum
The British Museum’s astonishing exhibit, Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Human Mind, is one of the best shows they’ve had since we’ve been in London. It’s a collection of carvings from the dawn of modern history in Europe, mostly on mammoth or reindeer ivory. The carvings are of a variety of objects—women, mostly, but […]
Storyline: starting the next chapter
I’m staying in a place called the Sunrise Cabin, but there’s no sunrise—only an uneven cover of clouds that’s getting progressively more translucent as dawn breaks somewhere beyond them. I’m not sure this cabin gets much sunlight, anyway, judging by the layer of algae that slicks the wooden deck. The pines around the cabin must […]
Boston speaks
I’m not afraid. I’m back at work. I go to the bars at night. I don’t take it personally. I just think it’s terrible. It used to be survival of the fittest. Now it’s survival of the luckiest. I saw an old man with his face completely wrapped in bandages walking his dog. He’s not […]
WordsDay: Don’t panic, it’s 42…uh, what was the question…?
I am no fan of science fiction. When I was in college I had a bandmate who loved the stuff – he pushed Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, and Herbert’s Dune on me. I waded though all this stuff diligently (one of my neuroses is that once I begin a book I have to finish it – […]
S&R Honors
Click here to learn more about past honorees...- S&R Fiction: “The Treehouse,” by Aimee Stahlberg
- Republicans perpetuate myths to keep Cold War alive
- S&R Nonfiction: “The Nobodies,” by Jennifer Pocock
- “See You in Hell” and the dominatrix garage: The Lost Patrol drops a new video, and btw, the CD is fantastic
- Iran’s election nuclear, but not nuked
- Mystery Unraveled: How a white, moderate, married, churchgoing, middle-class, middle-aged woman could vote for Obama
- An open letter to Burt Rutan, regarding his WSJ commentary on human-caused climate disruption
- Meet the men of Match.com: Really, guys, are you serious?
- Climate scientists still besieged
- Pelosi on Bush: “He’s not worth impeaching”
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wilywascal: Overcoming the knee-jerk reaction using logic may …
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Frank Dilatush: The Israelis might dispute your foundation argumen…
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My final word on Oakwood? | Lack of Environment: […] theScholars and Rogues website, Brian A…
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