Category Archives: Literature

Guilt at the edge

Posted on January 8, 2018 by

From David Adams Richards, Road to The Stilt House (1985): And things have suddenly become silent in the house. As silent as a man ashamed… I can smell it along with the spit from weeds. I listen like a criminal … Continue reading →

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Pointing the finger of shame

Posted on January 2, 2018 by

From “The Fish”, by Paul Quarrington (1985), extracted from The Life of Hope, where the protagonist is reading extracts from The Fish, a book written by the fictional Isaiah Hope, first published in 1891, and subsequently banned: It is time … Continue reading →

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Frozen Little Tombstones

Posted on December 20, 2017 by

From Matt Cohen, “The Zeidman Effect” (1985; later published in Living on Water [1988]) in relation to a concert pianist past his prime: Nathan Zeidman, the astonishing piano player who, after five years of mediocre performances in festivals, had suddenly … Continue reading →

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Consider

Posted on December 13, 2017 by

From Robert Fulford, “How Martin Amis puts the personal in personal essay“, National Post, December 9, 2017, p. WP2, in relation to Martin Amis, The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump. Essays and Reportage, 1986-2016. We can learn … Continue reading →

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Runs with my life

Posted on November 9, 2017 by

From an article by Holton Shulman, “U of O prof translates letters between Leo Tolstoy and wife“, The Fulcrum 78:10 (November 6, 2017): University of Ottawa Russian literature professor Andrew Donskov is no stranger to Leo Tolstoy. His entire professional … Continue reading →

Posted in Community of Scholars, Literature, Russia | Leave a comment

Held It

Posted on September 6, 2017 by

From The Maestro, by Tim Wynne-Jones (1995), where the protagonist has misrepresented who he is: He couldn’t tell her the real story. Anyway, he wanted to hold onto this dream for a bit longer. Like when you walk around in … Continue reading →

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Patmos

Posted on August 25, 2017 by

From The Maestro, by Tim Wynne-Jones (1995), where a world-famous pianist and composer explains his choice to live in rustic isolation: But when I actually came here, I knew what I needed more than health, even more than the quiet, … Continue reading →

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Heading Somewhere

Posted on August 13, 2017 by

In relation to a fourteen year-old boy running away from an abusive father and a familiar hamlet: He was too busy running away to worry yet about where he was going. And it didn’t occur to him, not on that … Continue reading →

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Discovery

Posted on May 1, 2017 by

From Jack Gance by Ward Just (1989): I was attempting to devise novel polling methods. A man’s dark heart was incomprehensible, but his mind was not. A dream was easier to discover than a nightmare.

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Vocabulary

Posted on April 7, 2017 by

From Volume 3 of A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth (1993). All these words to learn. Had to read with a pen, to highlight that not known or understood. Partial list, from Volume 3. Longer list, if Volumes 1 and … Continue reading →

Posted in Language, Language Learning, Literature | 1 Comment