In his own words
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Dubliners
Review: This was fucking magnificent. Joyce brings to life fin de siècle Dublin like to LIFE. God I felt I was there. Is it modernist? Not in the same sense as Portrait of the Artist and certainly not as in Ulysses, but it deviates sharply from the rigid narrative structure that we are familiar with…
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Alexander’s Bridge
Review: A five star performance again from Cather. Reminded me a lot of Henry James in The Ambassadors or the The Bostonians, men and women trying to be men and women but hidebound by manners and etiquette. This is the difference between good writing and great writing. The only criticism I would make is that…
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Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time
Review: Finally got through this after an abortive fist attempt in 2020 (made it 50 pages). The prose is purple, just gushing descriptions of each song, each chord, each performance. Musicological language throughout with no purpose except to confuse and lose the non-musicologist reader. 2/3 of the way through he finally gets down to where…
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Chasing New Horizons
Review: This is exactly how science needs to be communicated to the public. Lots of science for sure, but written so clearly that anyone can understand it easily. I learned so much. And I’m astonished this mission ever got off the drawing board. The number one concern, like all projects is: money, budgets, funding, costs.…
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Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp
Review: What a little jewel this is. Just a lucky find on Amazon based on my previous browsing. From memory, without access to the books, this remarkable Polish officer delivered a series of erudite and passionate lectures on Proust and his great novel. While locked up in a Soviet P.O.W. camp that was deplorably bad…
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If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler
Review: Without doubt one of the most peculiar and yet most enjoyable books I have ever encountered. To describe it is difficult. A man starts to read a new novel and finds it cuts off after the first chapter. So he goes back to the shop to complain and meets a woman who had the…
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Opera Anecdotes
Review: Excellent selection of opera anecdotes from Monteverdi to Britten, and from Aida to Zerlina. I read this a few pages at a time, daily, while taking a shit. I shit a lot, so I like to make use of the time. Now I’m flushed with success. Most, almost all of these anecdotes never happened,…
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Riders on the Storm
Review: I ordered this book with zero pre-conceptions and zero knowledge of The Doors. Okay, fractional knowledge. Like I had heard of them, and I had heard the main singles, and I knew Jim Morrison was their singer and that he died. Other than that, not much. This was written by the drummer, and is…
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Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music
Review: DNF. After a month I’m on page 423 of 770 and I’m tappin’ out. Great read, but so dense and scholarly. Wagner, Wagner everywhere, but not a drop to think. Essentially the author finds Wagner and Wagner references everywhere: because he’s looking for them. Learned a lot, and a fabulous reference for me Too…
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A Farewell to Arms
Review: Fuck am I stoned. Right off me tits. This was an excellent book. Intense prose in a jerky, staccato delivery. The action moves very quickly but then stalls and dies in Book V. There’s denouement and denou-disappointment, which this was. Illustrates the futility of war and armies especially in the Great War. If you…