Interesting things I've read Archives

Reading

“A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey

I read this book before it was exposed as containing significant doses of fiction. I was blown away by the raw power of the story and the spare, hard-hitting writing. It’s hard for me to say how much of that…

Reading

“The Color Purple” by Alice Walker

This is a deeply religious book, in a couple of different senses. First of all, the main character, Celie, narrates the book through letters she writes to God. She is trapped in abusive relationships, first with Pa and then with…

Reading

“A Pale View of Hills” by Kazuo Ishiguro

Most of this novel is memory: a woman thinking about her daughter’s suicide and remembering an earlier summer in post-War Nagasaki. Almost nothing happens in the present day. The whole story of A Pale View of Hills takes place in…

Reading

Franco Moretti on the Novel

Read a very interesting piece by Franco Moretti in New Left Review, July/August 2008. It seems like a synopsis of a much longer, multi-volume work on the theory of the novel, which I plan to read when I have time.…

Reading

“Identity” by Milan Kundera

Warning: this review gives away the ending. There’s something intensely dissatisfying about stories that end “but it was all a dream and then she woke up.” Logically, I suppose there shouldn’t be. We accept that a story is made up,…

Andrew Blackman

Andrew Blackman

Andrew Blackman

Tag: Interesting things I’ve read

“A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey

“The Color Purple” by Alice Walker

“A Pale View of Hills” by Kazuo Ishiguro

Franco Moretti on the Novel

“Identity” by Milan Kundera