Taking a Break
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Sometimes you need to step back. Recharge. Let the mind wander away from pages for a bit.
Keep ReadingDECEMBER 2008
Five posts from this month. End-of-year vibes mixed with literary reflections.
Egypt Farm - Rachel Cusk
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Michael meets Adam at university. Gets invited to the family estate for a weekend. Egypt Farm introduces him to the Hanbury clan—eccentric, rural, utterly unforgettable. Cusk captures the peculiar dynamics of British family life with surgical precision.
Keep ReadingTentative d'épuisement d'un lieu parisien - Georges Perec
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I've got a soft spot for Perec. He worked as a documentalist—my own training's patron saint. But mostly because he and the Oulipo crew proved you could play with language like it was construction material. This book? Perec sits in Place Saint-Sulpice and records everything. The mundane becomes fascinating.
Keep ReadingLa déshumanisation de l'art - José Ortega y Gasset
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Ever stood in front of contemporary art wondering what the hell you're looking at? Is it genius or a scam? Ortega y Gasset tackles this head-on. Written decades ago but still cuts through the noise. He talks about how modern art deliberately distances itself from human emotion. Not everyone's going to like it—that's the point.
Keep ReadingL'homme qui marchait sur la lune - Howard McCord
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William Gasper lives in a shipping container behind a gas station in nowhere Nevada. Lives? More like crashes there between wanderings. The man's a perpetual drifter. His vocation: walking. McCord's prose is sparse, almost arid—fits the landscape perfectly. A meditation on solitude and movement.
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