Sorrow by Kurt Brindley is a thought-provoking and unsettling read that will resonate with readers who appreciate complex explorations of identity, social commentary, and the darker aspects of human nature, making it a great fit for fans of literary, psychological thrillers that challenge and provoke.
Gina Ray Mitchell
I would like to thank Ms. Gina Ray Mitchell for taking the time and making the effort to so thoughtfully read and review my latest release Sorrow.
And I would like to ask that you take the time and make the effort to read her full review, one deep and insightful. In fact, it is so insightful that I believe she may have a better understanding of the book than I, which is certainly far from an impossibility as I’ve long held the belief that books are typically much smarter than those who write them.
If you are intrigued by Ms. Mitchell’s assessment of Sorrow and would like to make an assessment of your own, you can purchase an ebook edition of it, and those of all my other published works, for free until midnight tonight (PST).
I initially set out to record Henry James’ somewhat condescending response to Walter Besant’s very pretentious essay “The Art of Fiction”…
Until I discovered the letter from Henry James’ older brother, and renowned psychologist/philosopher, William James, where he tells Henry exactly how he feels about Henry’s latest release “The American Scene.”
Spoiler alert: It’s definitely not a 5-star review…
Being the father of two sons, I know how brothers can be not only brutally frank and painfully honest to one another, but also highly competitive and a bit boastful as well.
The older brother’s letter to the younger encompasses all that and more.
Check out my youtube channel and like and subscribe and yada yada yada and peristaltic belching…
Better yet, how about reading and reviewing my latest novel?
For many people art means rose-coloured windows, and selection means picking a bouquet for Mrs. Grundy. They will tell you glibly that artistic considerations have nothing to do with the disagreeable, with the ugly; they will rattle off shallow commonplaces about the province of art and the limits of art, till you are moved to some wonder in return as to the province and the limits of ignorance.
Long, too long America, Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only, But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not, And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are, (For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)
Of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the peace and humanity he and his legacy embody…
And as a feeble distraction to the day’s political happenings who many believe are diametrically opposed to all this honorable day otherwise would embody…
And by RIP, I mean rest in production, as Mr. Lynch said only not so many months ago that, despite his home-confining emphysema, he would never retire.
And by production, I don’t just mean making movies. For production to Mr. Lynch also meant making art, his initial creative endeavor begun as a wee lad, and making music, perhaps later in life his most personally rewarding endeavor as he was most adamant on the importance of the sound of his movies.
And if anyone were to be able to transcend the space/time limitations of our known reality to produce creatively in perpetuity, it would certainly be our beloved and beguiling Mr. Lynch, for his lynchian films subvert the real with artistic ease.
“The Spider and the Bee” is one of my favorite productions of Lynch’s that highlights his keen awareness of environment and his acute creative talents in such a hauntingly artistic manner…
The ancient concept of memento mori reminds us to “remember we must die,” not for any macabre or nihilistic purposes, but to prompt us to take a moment to contemplate our mortality so as to remember to live these fleeting, fatalistic lives of ours to their fullest.
Likewise, it seems the same could be said for Schopenhauer’s persistent contemplation of the evils of humankind. We contemplate these evils not to revel in and celebrate the boundless depravity of our kind, but to remind us that even in the best, most pure hearted of our species, therein Darkness resides; ergo, understanding that we have such an inherently Dark capacity to live wrongly, we should then strive in relentless determination to live our lives rightly and wholly in the Light.
Perhaps…
Excerpts from Schopenhauer’s essay On Human Nature. Music by @guinabernardes
Learning the tricky ins and outs of audio/video recording and editing ain’t easy for an old dog like me. But I’ve always wanted to offer audiobooks as part of my humble literary portfolio, so I guess it’s time for me to grin and bear it and get to it ’cause I certainly ain’t getting any younger.
As I work on recording my new novel Sorrow, I figured I might as well have a little visually creative fun with it along the way…
Narrating in general is less than easy for me; it is even less so when it’s the Early Modern English that was spoken nearly half a millennium ago.
In other words, when making an adaption of the Dune novel, take away all that makes it extraordinarily epic, such as its brutal take on toxic capitalism and its detrimental effect on cultures and climates, not to mention its more nuanced take on the dangers of cult of personalities slash hero worship, among other critical subplots, and you end up mostly with a Diet Dune a la a George Lucas Star Wars Trilogy.
for educational purposes only😉
Now, I’m not saying that Lucas’ Star Wars isn’t wasn’t epic, because it certainly was to this former 1977 twelve-year-old, but what I am saying is that I have to agree with what Denis Villeneuve said during a recent interview in Madrid while out on global tour pimping Dune II out to international Academy Award voters in hopes of snagging an Oscar nomination from them.
Q. There was a generation that grew up with Star Wars as something more than a simple cultural reference, and to this another followed perhaps that did the same with The Lord of the Rings. Will Dune be able to do the same?
A. It would be very pretentious of me to try to compare myself to those two cultural icons. The potential lies in the novel itself. It is a mythological story that has been extended over countless novels. In fact, I would dare to say that Star Wars is nothing more than an interesting adaptation of Dune. I think George Lucas should admit it. (My emphasis)
A lot of folks felt slash feel that way, especially Dune’s author Frank Herbert, as thoroughly discussed in and evidenced by Polygon’s in-depth article.
To fans of Dune, especially of Dune the novel, this debate is nothing new, obviously since Herbert led the charge upon the release of Star Wars.
But for those of you new to the debate, I could list here all the ways that Star Wars is, if not Dune-adapted, then at the least Dune-inspired, such as the easy ones like The Force, Luke, use The Force versus the Voice of the Ben Gesserit, or the similarities between Princess Leia and Princess Alia, but there are many, many nerdy articles out there that can identify them better than me. And the Nerdist has one of them.
Before we just dismiss this so-called debate as nothing more than a nerdy scifi Inside Baseball spat, we need to consider the legacies. George Lucas is a gazillionaire with a name that even non-scifi nerds all throughout the globe probably already know, or at least are familiar with.
I feel comfortable guessing that on the same global scale of non-scifi nerds the name Frank Herbert barely even registers, and that Herbert’s estate is nowhere close to being worth the gazillions that Lucas is.
Anyway… as an aside, Villeneuve’s Dune I was epic, not as epic as the first Star Wars obviously because that set the precedent for epic scifi films, but epic in a fresh and creative way nonetheless.
His Dune II, however, is highly forgetable to me. Literally, it was so boring I snoozed through most of it so I don’t really have a clue what it was about or how it compares to the novel. I guess I need to screen it again to see if it has the same lullaby effect as the first viewing.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see if Villeneuve was on his hustle enough to get the votes for an Oscar nomination for it. If not, then my initial take is probably right and it would be a waste of time to watch it again.
While you’re here, why don’t you pop on over to Amazon and snag one of my books today. They are all free until midnight tonight (PST), including my latest release, Sorrow.
An aging white male forsakes humanity, changes his name to Sorrow, and begins identifying as an it, just as its white son learns his Black girlfriend is pregnant, and you begin a murderous rampage targeting interracial couples just like them...
