Full Blog--All Posts

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

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

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...

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...

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

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”...

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...

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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...

Last time, we were musing about what connects the sections in Casting Shadows, that there seems to be a pattern of the narrator...

This week, a new story, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Casting Shadows, a short story or novel excerpt, published in the February 15th 2021 issue of The...

This week, as we wrap up our reading of Three Horses, a little background on the concept of the implied author. (Whiny voice: Are you...

The narration in Three Horses is written in first person. After all, the very first word is “I,” as in “I only read used books.” Is this...

Besides Laila, the other key character in Three Horses is Selim, a man whom the narrator befriends and helps, acts of kindness which have...

Usually, in this blog, I don’t want to merely describe the plots of the books I discuss in the manner of a book review. My purpose is to...