Monthly Archives: October 2014

Claims of a new 21st century literary movement called “Transrealism” are, so far, just that – claims…. There have been a number of cross-genre fiction experiments being spun out these days. The most famous (and commercially successful) of these experiments is likely … Continue reading →

Among bassists of the Classic Rock generation, Jack Bruce casts a long, challenging, inspiring shadow… Jack Bruce, the bassist for the very first “super group,” Cream, died late last week. There have been many tributes, including a lovely one from … Continue reading →

In which one author tells another, to paraphrase one well known critic, nothing can please many nor please long but representations by the general public… In a recent New Republic essay, author Jennifer Weiner takes author Margo Howard to task. … Continue reading →

Maeve Binchy’s fictional world is one where those who try to do good turn out well…as for the others…. As I’ve made clear by now to any who read my essays on the books I read, I have devoted 2014 … Continue reading →

“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” – Oscar Wilde (For previous posts in this series look here, here, and here.) After several threats to do … Continue reading →

In the case of a writer like Nicholas Sparks, perhaps it’s that he gives readers a familiar story arc time after time that explains his success… After reading a couple of superb pieces of literary fiction by J.F. Powers and … Continue reading →

Shelby Foote’s tale of upper class Southerners behaving badly is redolent with that peculiarly disturbing characteristic called “Southernness…” Let me me do what any good Southerner would do when asked for an explanation – tell you a story… When I … Continue reading →

Catholicism is darkly comic in J.F. Powers’s Morte D’Urban – would that it were more comic, less dark, in the real world… Well, this goes back yet again to Wufnik. He and I seem to bandy about the names of writers … Continue reading →

Almost forgotten as a writer now, Ben Ames Williams’s novels and stories represent the most interesting of American literary legacies – market driven art…. This essay concerns one of the novels of Ben Ames Williams. If you’re asking yourself “Who?” … Continue reading →

In the end Joe David Bellamy’s Literary Luxuries reads now more like an elegy for a now lost literary landscape…and a lost friend to literature…. (For previous essays in this series, look here, here, here, here and here.) This, the last in this series … Continue reading →