Monthly Archives: March 2015
Arnold Gingrich: A Well Tempered Angler
“Actually, though being well read must be a part of the process, an angler is tempered chiefly by practice and experience, by learning and attempting to reach the successively higher goals of his sport, and thus acquiring, through any amount of … Continue reading
Andre Gide’s Corydon: Defending who you are…
“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.” … Continue reading
Book Review: The Burgundy Briefcase by Roberta Burton
Knowledge in our chosen fields of endeavor is important, certainly…knowledge of ourselves is essential…. Roberta Burton’s The Burgundy Briefcase is a difficult novel to discuss because it doesn’t seem quite sure what sort of novel it wants to be. It’s part star-crossed … Continue reading
Thomas Mann’s Joseph the Provider: the truth of the story….
“Any attempt to examine the moral foundations of our exceedingly complicated world requires a certain amount of learning.” – Thomas Mann, Joseph the Provider Since Alfred Nobel established his prizes at the turn of the 20th century, there have been … Continue reading
Balzac’s Pere Goriot: a cautionary tale for helicopter parents…
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…parent dotes on children who are ingrates and…yeah, well… It is easy to make arguments against Père Goriot. It’s a rather sloppy book because the author, Honoré de Balzac, wrote quickly and rarely … Continue reading
MoMa, Bjork, and the future of art…
For art and artists, these are interesting times…as Adam Marsland reminds us, that’s a Chinese curse… I’m currently working my way through a re-read of Honoré de Balzac’s marvelous Pere Goriot as part of my 2015 reading list. While the … Continue reading
Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time: the Byron factor
“Contradiction is, with me, an innate passion; my entire life has been nothing but a chain of sad and frustrating contradictions to heart or reason.” – Grigoriy Pechorin in A Hero of Our Time… Another Russian classic from the 2015 … Continue reading
Pushkin’s Prose Tales: Russian Romanticism, Russian Literature…
Pushkin’s prose tales, mostly uncompleted, tantalize and torment readers both with their beauty and with the wistful sense of ‘what might have been’ that their incompleteness conveys…. This selection from the 2015 reading list is a re-read from my undergraduate days. The … Continue reading
