Tom Gething's Blog, page 6
September 27, 2012
Does My Blog Harm Literature?
Reblogged from A Little Blog of Books and Other Stuff:
According to Peter Stothard, this year’s chair of the Man Booker Prize judges, book bloggers are harming literature. Well thanks, Peter. Thanks a lot. I’m sure there are many people who have come across my blog who might have been indifferent or in strong disagreement with my reviews but I never expected the whole concept of my blog to be accused of being detrimental to literature.
After publishing my commentary o...
September 25, 2012
This is not a review
Sean Dexter, author of Maggie’s Drawers, is a stubborn man but also, apparently, one of integrity. I’ve never met him, although we have communicated by email. My sister gave his wife a copy of my novel, Under a False Flag. Sean read it and liked it enough to write a favorable review on Amazon.com and Goodreads.com. That prompted a correspondence between us, and a “friending” on Goodreads.
I was appreciative of his kind words for my book and also intrigued by the subject of one of his own novel...
September 9, 2012
Poem: "Allende" -- The Other 9/11
Reblogged from Brave New World:
By: Mario Benedetti, Dr. Gary S. Corseri and Oscar Gonzalez
Introduction
On 9/11, there will be the flag-waving and the speeches, the hoopla and memorials, pledges by politicians to maintain the “War on Terror”–wrong preposition there! Should be “of”!—pundits pontificating and celebrities trying to cerebrate. Few Americans will pause to reflect on the 9/11 of 1973, when the CIA-engineered coup against the most democratic government in South America—that of Chile—...
August 22, 2012
The inconsolable Mr. Hugo
Poet Richard Hugo was a native of Seattle, or technically, White Center, an unincorporated neighborhood familiarly known as “Rat City.” White Center is a tough, rundown area of immigrants and low-cost housing, a place feared by many Seattleitesas a lawless no-man’s-land of bars and gaming parlors prowled by gangs and prone to random gunfire. In Richard Hugo’s youth, the 1930s, it wasn’t much different–a hardscrabble place where the poor lived.
White Center permeates Hugo’s poetry. It haunts hi...
August 12, 2012
Stories that illuminate
Edith Pearlman, winner of this year’s National Book Critics’ Circle Award, has quietly published dozens of fine stories over the last forty years in small literary magazines. Although many were selected for anthologies and “best-of” awards, few readers had heard of her until the University of North Carolina Wilmington published Binocular Vision, New and Selected Stories in 2011.
Pearlman mainly writes about women. Most are Jewish. Many are older, smart, and career-minded. Some are refugees. Th...
July 29, 2012
“I’m not sure I should be telling this…”
Cortázar’s gravestone at Montparnasse Cemetery. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Thus begins my story “Sabotage,”in which Julio Cortázar squares off with Michelangelo Antonioni. My little homage to these two artistic geniuses has just been published in the Barcelona Review. TBR is an exciting online literary magazine now in its 15th year of publication, offering contemporary writing in English, Spanish, Catalan and French. Check it out here:
July 27, 2012
We read
Reblogged from hovercraftdoggy:
Book & Paper Art by the Unicorn Diaries
Book & Paper Art by the Unicorn Diaries / Source
For a reader, is this nose to the grindstone?
July 17, 2012
Neruda's Women Brought Back
Reblogged from Brave New World:
By: Charles R. Larson
In spite of its harsh context—the final months of Salvador Allende’s government in Chile in the 1970s—Roberto Ampuero’sThe Neruda Casewill put a smile on your face. The publishers have hyped the book as a detective novel, which it is in part, but it’s much more an exploration of the Nobel Prize poet’s private life—especially the many women (wives and lovers) who became the inspiration for his poetry vis-à-vis Neruda’s growing political pers...
