Forty-six essays. A collection of essays is a good place to start with reading a great writer. The essay, Degenerate Art, just four and half pages, isForty-six essays. A collection of essays is a good place to start with reading a great writer. The essay, Degenerate Art, just four and half pages, is phenomenal. Also the essays on Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, and John Dos Passos....more
A brand new hardback copy borrowed from the Library. I read two essays, 'Why Read?' and 'Australia and I'. I'll be buying a copy. Five stars so far.A brand new hardback copy borrowed from the Library. I read two essays, 'Why Read?' and 'Australia and I'. I'll be buying a copy. Five stars so far....more
"Some thing only dimly remembered tells us something interesting about ourselves. Something only dimly remembered tells us that the secret point of mo"Some thing only dimly remembered tells us something interesting about ourselves. Something only dimly remembered tells us that the secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy, nor power for power's sake. American's are uneasy with their possessions. Guilty about power. All of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power, but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy, it is the instinct that drove America to the Pacific all through the nineteenth century, the desire to be able to find a restaurant open in case you want a sandwich, to be a free agent, to live by one's own rules. Of course we do not admit that. The instinct is socially suicidal and because we recognize that this is so, we have developed workable ways of saying one thing and believing quite another."
From the essay, '7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38'. Slouching Towards Bethlehem...more
Stranger than fiction. This is better than fiction. Short journalist articles, the shorter (2 to 3 pages) are the stronger for the sting at the end, wStranger than fiction. This is better than fiction. Short journalist articles, the shorter (2 to 3 pages) are the stronger for the sting at the end, with the strength of literature. Some standouts are: The World's Most Famous Year Yes, Nostalgia Is the Same as it Ever Was (this is a brilliant one on The Beatles songs.) How Do You Write a Novel? My Other Me My Personal Hemingway Ghosts of the Road Maria of My Heart Literature Without Pain The Cubans Face the Blockade Poetry, in Children's Reach The Postman Rings a Thousand Times
There are fifty in all. I could go on, there's not a weak one in there.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez 'called journalism "the best job in the world," and he identified more as a journalist than a writer: "I am basically a journalist. All my life I have been a journalist." '
Garcia Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In one of the articles in this collection, Writer Wanted, GGM recalls his commitment to meeting his weekly deadline for his newspaper column while writing his novels....more
'Sartre is a true post-colonial pioneer. His ethical and political struggle against all forms of oppression and exploitation speak to the problems of 'Sartre is a true post-colonial pioneer. His ethical and political struggle against all forms of oppression and exploitation speak to the problems of our own times with a rare courage and cogency.' Homi K. Bhabha....more
MYTH TODAY 'It is this constant game of hide-and-seek between the meaning and the form which defines myth.'Phew! That was good. Give the mind an enema.
MYTH TODAY 'It is this constant game of hide-and-seek between the meaning and the form which defines myth.'
'Myth hides nothing; its function is to distort, not to make disappear.'
'Myth is a value, truth is no guarantee for it; nothing prevents it from being a perpetual alibi: it is enough that the signifier has two sides for it always to have an 'elsewhere' at its disposal. The meaning is always there to prevent the form; the form is always there to outdistance the meaning.'
'Bourgeois ideology continuously transforms the products of history into essential types.'...more
**spoiler alert** 360 pages including Introduction. Thirty-two essays. Most of the sixteen I read are five stars. Most but not all. I read them at ran**spoiler alert** 360 pages including Introduction. Thirty-two essays. Most of the sixteen I read are five stars. Most but not all. I read them at random, not sequentially. I dislike sweeping generalization and singular selective examples to reinforce an argument in an essay. Fifteen essays I left unfinished.
There are some superb standout five star essays. 'No Dogs, No Fruit, No Firearms, No Professors' by Maria Tumarkin. 'Havoc: A Life in Accidents' by Tim Winton. 'The Informed Imagination' by Drusilla Modjeska. 'The Pencil and the Damage Done' by Ceridwen Dovey. 'Seven Poor Men of Sydney' by Delia Falconer. and 'Malcolm Frazer: Obituary' by Mungo MacCallum, which should be a valuable archival document. Or a screenplay or a draft for a series. It's only six pages but says and covers a lot. I haven't read an obituary like it. Mungo is a national treasure.
My copy has ESSAYS on the cover, not POEMS....more
