Calling presentism a prejudice is a little like calling 45 a bad president: It’s not strong enough.
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Julio Cortázar’s “Bestiary”: Man-eating animals
The “Bestiary” narrates pre-adolescent Isabel’s summer vacation with her cousin Nino and … a tiger.
Continue reading...“Blind Geronimo and His Brother”: Mistrust Finds its End
Brothers Geronimo and Carlo travel the roads of 19th century Italy, entertaining passers-by with song, but one plants a seed of mistrust exposing years of alienation.
Continue reading...“Anxiety … Dizziness … Freedom”: Paraself Virtue
Ted Chiang’s “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” considers the ethical effects of the consulation with a paraself, a self known through quantum computing.
Continue reading...Gottfried Keller’s “The Little Dance Legend”: Pagans Mix Poorly
G. Keller’s “The Little Dance Legend” is a quizzical story about Musa, a dancer among the saints whose dance and pagan art led to expulsion from the heavenly host.
Continue reading...“Beyond the Pale”: The Repressed Returns
William Trevor’s “Beyond the Pale” tells of four friends visiting an idyllic Irish island, on the occasion of the return of the idyll’s history, dramatically so.
Continue reading...Ginzburg’s “The Mother”: Recollections Partial and Fleeting
Natalia Ginzburg’s “The Mother” is a story about a “mother” from the perspective of her two boys who receive from her little in the way of mothering.
Continue reading...Hoffman’s “Don Juan”: The Mysterious Visitation
Hoffmann’s “Don Juan” is a theatre review written as a short story, bound to enlighten lovers of Don Giovanni and mystify everyone else.
Continue reading...“An Unexpected Reunion”: Death’s Dominion Disturbed
In Johann Peter Hebel’s “An Unexpected Reunion” death seems to separate a betrothed couple, but after the passing of much time they are peculiarly reunited.
Continue reading...Goethe’s Hymn to Virtue: “The Attorney”
Goethe’s “The Attorney” shows that though habit and nature are not easily conquered, the powers of the sovereign will as it realizes virtue are possibly without equal.
Continue reading...“The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling”: Writing on Trial
Writing explores writing in Ted Chiang’s “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling,” in a story constructed of two different stories, the one of which bears a self-conscious narrator and the other lacking.
Continue reading...Read Viewed Consumed |2020-09
Cultural consumption involved George Saunders’ consummately misanthropic CivilWarLand, as well as Pygmalion (1938) and The 49th Parallel (1944)
Continue reading...‘Tis Short Story Month
During this lovely autumn month I will read a new short story each day and then write a brief post about the story. A different author each day.
Continue reading...George Saunders’ “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline”
George Saunders’ short story collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, was born in a minimum security prison in central Pennysylvania
Continue reading...August 2020: Read, Viewed
During the hot days of August my tremendous appetite to read was momentarily sated by more Tolstoy (eternally), James Baldwin, and even a little G.K. Chesterton.
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