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Normal People
This week, a new story, my friends, Irish author Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel, Normal People. Normal People was a bestseller in the United...

Alan Bray
Mar 24, 20224 min read


Nocturnal Progression
Last week, due to constraints of space and time, we interrupted our discussion of Cellists, the last story in Nocturnes. Let’s continue...

Alan Bray
Mar 17, 20224 min read


The Fellas In The Band Observe A Flirty Actress
In Cellists, the fifth and final story in Nocturnes, we return to the city of Venice but with new characters. The complex narrative...

Alan Bray
Mar 10, 20225 min read


You Turkey
The fourth story in Nocturnes is entitled Nocturne and is the longest of the five contained therein. Does this have meaning? I don’t...

Alan Bray
Mar 3, 20225 min read


You Talkin' To Me?
In the third story of Nocturnes, Malvern Hills, we immediately come on a first-person narrator who is never named. “I’d spent the spring...

Alan Bray
Feb 24, 20224 min read


The Band Played On
The title of the next story in Nocturnes contains another musical reference, Come Rain or Come Shine, the title of a famous American song...

Alan Bray
Feb 17, 20225 min read


Lost Illusions
Last week, we began to look at Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes, specifically the first tale, Crooner. I cut the diamond in stating that I...

Alan Bray
Feb 10, 20224 min read


Nocturnes
This week a new book, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2009 Nocturnes, originally published in Britain and then by American publisher Knopf in the same...

Alan Bray
Feb 3, 20226 min read


The Single Life
Last time, we looked at the end of Kino and the way Kino the character transforms, driven to an extreme point by the experience of having...

Alan Bray
Jan 27, 20224 min read


The Tell-Tale Heart
Kino sets off, leaving a note that the bar will be closed till further notice. He stays at a hotel, goes to the movies, hires a...

Alan Bray
Jan 20, 20224 min read


Snakes
When we last left Kino, he’d just had the encounter with the woman burned by cigarettes and was shown feeling ambivalently about her....

Alan Bray
Jan 13, 20225 min read


Let's Step Outside
Kino’s bar is a modest success. We learn more about “the man.” “My name is Kamita,” he said. It’s written with the characters for “god”...

Alan Bray
Jan 6, 20225 min read


Kino
This week, a new story, Kino, a long short story written by Haruki Murakami. An English version of Kino first appeared in The New Yorker...

Alan Bray
Dec 30, 20214 min read


Jolly Hunting
A friend recently wrote that he would be interested in my thinking about Steppenwolf in light of recent mass and/or school shootings, as...

Alan Bray
Dec 23, 20214 min read


Hot For Teacher
Last week, I said, “Although it masquerades as one, this (Steppenwolf) is not a realist novel that attempts to show “life as it really...

Alan Bray
Dec 16, 20214 min read


There Are No Coincidences
– Don Juan, in Carlos Castenada’s The Teachings of Don Juan No coincidence, no story - an ancient Chinese saying. Two mutually exclusive...

Alan Bray
Dec 9, 20214 min read


Magic Theater
Last week, we talked about how the first section of Steppenwolf—after the preface—describes Harry Haller’s painful existence. He is glum,...

Alan Bray
Dec 2, 20215 min read


Rage Against the Machine
Harry Haller’s purported journal begins with a description of his day—written in past tense, something we must return to later. He is, to...

Alan Bray
Nov 25, 20214 min read


Get Your Motor Running
This week, a new book, Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, first published in 1927. I am using a Picador edition published in 1963 which...

Alan Bray
Nov 18, 20214 min read


Walkin' the Dog
An important idea is that reading a story changes the reader, that being with a story—and we should say, the implied author of the...

Alan Bray
Nov 11, 20215 min read