Articles

In defense of the tome: four books for four seasons

In July, Charles Dee Mitchell wrote an excellent article on this blog entitled “Enough with the Tomes: 4 Authors to Read in an Afternoon.” However, despite its excellent recommendations, the reverse position deserves an ardent defense.

Speedboat by Renata Adler; following Mr Foster Wallace’s recommendation

Reading the recommendations of established authors lets you look into the mind of an artist in a unique way; you don’t just see how they love to create, but the creations of others that they admire.

Darkness and laughs take center stage to celebrate Dallas Noir

Last June, The Wild Detectives gathered together some of the Texan authors who contributed to Dallas Noir, a short stories collection set in Dallas. Matt Bondurant, Catherine Cuellar, Ben Fountain, Suzanne Frank, Daniel J. Hale, David Hale Smith, Fran Hillyer, Harry Hunsicker, Kathleen Kent and Merritt Tierce opened the also called Dallas Noir, Oak Cliff’s First Literary Festival.

Reading E. L. Doctorow is the best way of paying your respects to him

In this world of incessant breaking news, emails, texts and notifications of every kind it is hard to believe that the passing of E L Doctorow could draw much attention to his figure. Let alone to his books. We shouldn’t fool ourselves.

Happiness for Beginners by Katherine Center

In Happiness for Beginners Katherine Center tackles the well-trod territory of a woman on the verge, but what matters is the telling and Center turns it into a fun, entertaining read that has a lot to say about our preconceived notions of others. And of ourselves.

The other side of the bar or those unlikely places and lives where you can find your own inspiration

Nobody with a minimum amount of common sense would ever consider neither one of these books Ablutions (Patrick DeWitt, 2009) and Love Me Back (Merritt Tierce, 2014) as inspirational. On the other hand, what anybody can easily see is that when it comes to writing fiction, these two know pretty damn well what they are doing. In fact, it is really hard to believe that we are talking about a couple of debut novels.

Reality beats porn

That’s what Pedro Almodovar used to say to illustrate how rich and unpredictable reality could be. This very same expression remained firm in my head, after I read Gyorgy Faludy’s “My Happy Days in Hell”.

That part of your person of which you cannot take any selfies

John Williams, an English Academic at the University of Denver, wrote “Stoner” in 1963. In a conversation with his agent in which she gave him little hope of commercial success, the author answered her with this words: “The only thing I’m sure of is that it’s a good novel; in time it may even be thought of as a substantially good one.” Time proved him right.