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Alan Bray
- Dec 24, 2020
- 3 min
Startling Developments
From the outset, the Narrator entity of The Moslem Wife expresses cutting judgements of the characters, skewering their vanities and...


Alan Bray
- Dec 17, 2020
- 3 min
The Moslem Wife
A new story this week, dear friends, The Moslem Wife by Mavis Gallant, first published in The New Yorker in 1976. The story is included...


Alan Bray
- Dec 10, 2020
- 4 min
Migration
An interesting thing to note about Lion is that four of the characters—Patrick, Hana, Caravaggio, and Clara—appear in Ondaatje’s next...


Alan Bray
- Dec 3, 2020
- 4 min
Poorly Drawn Boy
In The Skin of a Lion has not one but two scenes in which Patrick Lewis is sketched. Early in the story, his father Hazen “outlined the...


Alan Bray
- Nov 26, 2020
- 4 min
In Which I Define Life
In a previous post having to do with a different book, I wrote about What Do You Do When I Can’t See You—that phenomena in fiction of the...


Alan Bray
- Nov 19, 2020
- 4 min
The Mysteries of the Model Author
Let’s consider some implications of the narrative style of In the Skin of a Lion. Umberto Eco suggests that a text contains three...


Alan Bray
- Nov 12, 2020
- 5 min
Zoom
Last week, I threatened to write about In the Skin of a Lion’s narrative structure. Going to do it today. The book is often described as...


Alan Bray
- Nov 5, 2020
- 4 min
In the Skin of a Lion
This week, a new story, Michael Ondaatje’s 1987 book, In the Skin of a Lion. At times, the past becomes bit murky, but I believe I first...


Alan Bray
- Oct 29, 2020
- 4 min
The Boat Is Sinking! Bail!
The ending of Now We Shall Be Entirely Free is rather open and ambiguous—to me, at least. It’s quite possible Andrew Miller might read my...


Alan Bray
- Oct 22, 2020
- 4 min
The End of Omniscience
The narrational style of Now We Shall Be Entirely Free shifts from beginning to end. We’ve talked about how, in the beginning, it is...


Alan Bray
- Oct 15, 2020
- 4 min
Shut Up and Read
Literary theorist Roland Barthes developed a distinction in literature between readerly and writerly texts. He believed most texts are...

Alan Bray
- Oct 8, 2020
- 4 min
Sin-Eater
The significance of names in Now We Shall Be Entirely Free should probably be noted. John Lacroix certainly makes one think of the French...

Alan Bray
- Oct 1, 2020
- 1 min
A New Web Site
With the help of my wonderful wife, Dena, I have a new web site. It has some new photos, including a fine one of yours truly. A new...

Alan Bray
- Oct 1, 2020
- 4 min
Some 'Splaining To Do
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...

Alan Bray
- Sep 24, 2020
- 4 min
Now We Shall Be Entirely Free
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,...

Alan Bray
- Sep 17, 2020
- 4 min
What Is This Thing Called Love
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,...
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- Sep 10, 2020
- 4 min
"Country" in a Chanel Suit
An oft-noted distinction within literary texts is whether they emphasize showing the characters in action over telling the reader about...
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- Sep 3, 2020
- 3 min
Imaginary Friends
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...
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- Aug 27, 2020
- 4 min
Time and "Sport"
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...
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- Aug 20, 2020
- 3 min
Truthiness
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...