false 17 184 184 true 5747282 read 0 true 1807949 currently-reading 0 true 1807948 to-read http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/142343-xi-an-s-portrait-and-theory Benjamin made a comment in the Q&A with Zak Smith group:

In either of them, which passage made you think they had something worth saying - which passages within them do you return to, if you return at all, to re-appraise? To say, "What the hell was he talking about?" or, alternately, "What the hell was I thinking?" Or, to say, "Yes, that's it. Precisely it. Still." Or not. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/55564459 to: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman: The Florida Edition (Penguin Classics) by Laurence Sterne
I think this a brilliant book of incredible achievement - a "rara avis" still living for all that it originated in the eighteenth century. This book's comedy remains fresh, all motivated by a tremendously humane spirit. Uncle Toby remains a grand character, great-hearted, though all too wounded and comprehensible in his hobby horse.

The scene with the chesnut, the fall in the model town, and the widow and Uncle Toby all remain set pieces of exemplary craft and skill on the part of Sterne that match anything being written today. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/41126897 to: From Hell (Paperback) by Alan Moore
I read this in one sitting - and while I gave it away, I found it a perfect marriage of technique and horror that moved me powerfully - then again, the material in and of itself must move if a creature have sympathy for other humans - it seems very hard not to hit home when depicting such brutal conditions - and at times the allusion to the Holocaust feels a bit stretched on the part of Moore - but as he works in a medium still struggling for recognition, to labor over much on a point may feel necessary to him. But I was profoundly disturbed by the sublime in that book - the sublime of inexpressible disquiet and horror that, nonetheless, marks the divine if anything can. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/53408362 to: Zak Smith: Pictures of Girls (Hardcover) by Zak Smith
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/17488.Q_A_with_Zak_Smith Benjamin joined the Q&A with Zak Smith group. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/51472918 Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World (Hardcover) by Eugene M. McCarthy
My uncle published this. Some free press. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/51472794 to: A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.) by Howard Zinn
Too much to say. Truly in progress, but I don't have time to discuss it. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/41192810 to: Parzival: A Romance of the Middle Ages (Paperback) by Wolfram von Eschenbach
In the middle of my Joseph Campbell revival, with his emphasis on the mythic quest and the completion of 2666, which engages with the motifs and themes of Parzival - a quest for meaning beyond this life like the Grail - in the person of a knight (Archimboldi)... ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/755508-adam Benjamin made a comment on Adam's profile:

The Neruda quote remains a favorite; it is either he or Lorca who compares his beloved's body to a tolling bell with him the hammer within ringing.

If you like that, peruse his Love Sonnets. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/41126985 to: The Savage Detectives (Hardcover) by Roberto Bolaño
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