In his famous Afterword to Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov closed with: My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody’s concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammelled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses–the baffling mirror, the black velvetContinue reading “On First And Second Languages V – Nabokov’s Lament”
Category Archives: Literature
Naguib Mahfouz On Forgetting And Habit
In Naguib Mahfouz‘s Autumn Quail, Isa, the corrupt bureaucrat whose long, slow, and painful decline after a purge following the 1952 revolution in Egypt the novel tracks, brings back Riri, a woman of the night, to his home. The next day, He woke up about noon and looked with curiosity at the naked girl sleepingContinue reading “Naguib Mahfouz On Forgetting And Habit”
Mary McCarthy On Henry Mulcahy’s Selfishness
In Mary McCarthy‘s The Groves of Academe, John Bentkoop, a faculty member at Jocelyn College, offers his take on his beleaguered colleague, Henry Mulcahy, who has set in motion schemes of varying deviousness in his bid to hang on to his precious position after receiving a dismissal notice from the college president: Hen has a remarkableContinue reading “Mary McCarthy On Henry Mulcahy’s Selfishness”
The Pencil Eraser As Proustian Madeleine
I prepare for classes by reading the texts I have assigned. As I read, on occasion, I make notes in the margins or underline words and sentences. Not too vigorously or extensively, because I still suffer from old scruples and niceties having to do with a fetishistic respect for the printed word; it took meContinue reading “The Pencil Eraser As Proustian Madeleine”
Camus On The Death Penalty And The Right To Make Amends
In Reflections on the Guillotine Albert Camus writes: Deciding that a man must have the definitive punishment imposed on him is tantamount to deciding that that man has no chance of making amends….none among us can settle the question, for we are all both judges and interested parties. Whence our uncertainty as to our right to kill and our inability to convinceContinue reading “Camus On The Death Penalty And The Right To Make Amends”
The Road And The Apocalyptic World of the Homeless
Last week, the students in my Philosophical Issues in Literature class and I, as part of our ongoing discussion about Cormac McCarthy‘s The Road, watched John Hillcoat‘s cinematic adaptation of it. On Monday, we watched roughly half the movie in class, and then on Wednesday, we concentrated on three scenes: the encounter with Ely theContinue reading “The Road And The Apocalyptic World of the Homeless”
Parable of the Sower: Octavia Butler’s Parable
Octavia Butler‘s Parable of the Sower, the richly symbolic and subversive.story of Lauren Olamina, a prophet in the making, one finding her voice and her people in the midst of an America whose social order is collapsing around her, grows on you. The story line is sparse: the US’ accumulated social, political and environmental dysfunctionsContinue reading “Parable of the Sower: Octavia Butler’s Parable”
Paul Morel and Travis Bickle: The World-Dissolving Melancholic Gaze
In Sons and Lovers (1913), D. H. Lawrence directs many glances at the Derbyshire landscape, often through his characters’ distinctive visions. Here is one, this time through Paul Morel: He was brooding now, staring out over the country from under sullen brows. The little, interesting diversity of shapes had vanished from the scene; all thatContinue reading “Paul Morel and Travis Bickle: The World-Dissolving Melancholic Gaze”
Ghost From The Machine: Once Again, The Dead Return
Matt Osterman‘s Ghost from the Machine (2010)–originally titled and known internationally as Phasma Ex Machina–is touted by its marketing material as a ‘supernatural thriller’. A low-budget indie, it uses a cast made up of genuine amateurs who sometimes look distinctly uncomfortable and self-conscious on camera, and wears its modest production values on its sleeve. The story sounds hokeyContinue reading “Ghost From The Machine: Once Again, The Dead Return”
Isaac Bashevis Singer on A Rabbi’s Crisis
In Isaac Bashevis Singer‘s “I Place My Reliance on No Man” (collected with other short stories in Short Friday) Rabbi Jonathan Danziger goes to pray in his synagogue one Monday morning. As he prays, he encounters a crisis: When the rabbi came to the words, ‘I place my reliance on no man,’ he stopped. The words stuck inContinue reading “Isaac Bashevis Singer on A Rabbi’s Crisis”
Samir Chopra 