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Alan Bray
- Jan 20, 2022
- 4 min
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 13, 2022
- 5 min
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 6, 2022
- 5 min
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
- Dec 30, 2021
- 4 min
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 23, 2021
- 4 min
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 16, 2021
- 4 min
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 9, 2021
- 4 min
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 2, 2021
- 5 min
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
- Nov 25, 2021
- 4 min
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 18, 2021
- 4 min
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 11, 2021
- 5 min
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 4, 2021
- 3 min
Time And The Hour Runs Through The Darkest Day
Last time, we were musing about what connects the sections in Casting Shadows, that there seems to be a pattern of the narrator...