Now We Shall Be Entirely Free is a novel written around the year 2018, but the story takes place in the British Isles in 1810 after the...

This week, a new book, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free written by Andrew Miller, published in 2019. I first read it earlier this year,...

An early review of “A Sport and a Pastime,” states that to live for sex alone is to be less than human. I don’t know. On the face of it,...

An oft-noted distinction within literary texts is whether they emphasize showing the characters in action over telling the reader about...

Since writing last week’s post, I’ve been up around three a.m., worrying about what I wrote last time, worrying about the effect of my...

This week, let’s look at how time is handled in “A Sport and a Pastime.” In his great book, “The Perpetual Orgy,” Mario Vargas Llosa...

Last wee k, we began to turn our keen minds toward James Salter’s “A Sport and a Pastime.” Let’s continue. By definition, a work of...

This week, a new work of fiction, “A Sport and a Pastime” written by James Salter, published in 1967. I first learned of Salter belatedly...

Who is the narrator of “Starting Out in the Evening?” Is it Brian Morton? Is he “telling” the story, displaced across space and time to...

What’s missing in “Starting Out in the Evening” is as significant as what’s present. A lot is missing; the novel consists of...

All right, sit down everybody. I’m going to continue talking about “Starting Out in the Evening,” but first I have a few (other) thoughts...

One of the joys of “Starting Out in the Evening” is the lovely interconnectedness of it—the integrity, if you will, of a story that...

This week, a new book—Brian Morrison’s 1998 novel “Starting Out in the Evening.” I saw the film version of this novel first, in...

As I mentioned several posts back, I saw the film version of “The English Patient” before reading the book, an interesting phenomenon. It...

Today, I want to write about how verb tenses are used in “The English Patient” to—(WTF? Sounds like a snooze-fest, pal. Maybe catch you...

Last week, I identified two modes of narration in “The English Patient,” the (nearly) invisible narrator who tells the story of the four...

This week, a new novel, Michael Ondaatje’s “The English Patient.” In 1995 I was browsing in a bookstore in downtown Chicago and saw “The...

I have spoken at tedious length about the narrator’s voice in “Love in the Time of Cholera,” best beloved. (I’ve been wanting to write...

Before setting out once again on my discussion of “Love in the Time of Cholera,” I should probably issue, belatedly, a spoiler alert....

Here’s that first line again—"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.” The...