William Gay is a genius

A literary one at least. The deceased author William Gay, that is, not the former professional football cornerback William Gay. Well, William Gay the cornerback may also be a literary genius, I’m just not aware of it. But I am aware that Nic Pizzolatto is too a genius, at least of the screenwriting variation, as … Read more

Who am I to blame?

Nobel Medal, Prize for Physics (medal)

Is anyone as surprised as I am that the Nobel Prize in Literature went to an old pasty white dude?

I’m mean, it’s only been four years since the last one was selected with Peter Handke, and five years before that since Patrick Modiano was selected, and three years before that since Tomas Tranströmer was selected.

Of course, Bob Dylan doesn’t count in 2016, because, well, wtf was that all about anyway?

Nor does Kazuo Ishiguro in 2017, unless you are of the mindset of the former South African apartheid government and regard those of East Asian descendancy as honorary whites.

Of course in this day and age it is treading in dangerous territory to assume the particulars of anyone’s identity, even that of assumed pasty old white dudes such as mentioned above, sans Ishiguro of course.

But I’m pretty damn confident of my assumptions.

Come to think of it, that’s a whole lot of old white dudes selected for the NPL in just a little over the past decade.

What’s up with that?

I thought, with the state of the world as it is, with global sensibilities as they are, old pasty white dudes were persona non grata when it comes to just about any form of praise or recognition.

Oui, no?

It certainly is a oui for me and I’m as old and male and pasty white as they come.

I say, to hell with old pasty white dudes, regardless of their particular talents, or lack thereof.

Can I get an amen?

Read more

No matter how bad it gets…

grayscale photo of explosion on the beach

And it has gotten extremely bad lately…

I guess there is some comfort to be found in knowing…

That it could always get worse.

Yeah…

Not sure if I have the imaginative capacity, or fortitude, to imagine how.

Hope I don’t.

But, still, here we are, despite it all, moving forward…

Even if it’s just at the most timid and extremely infinitesimal pace.

Because we must.

And we shall.

So yeah, in the midst of all this, all this being our latest global nightmare of ___________ [fill in the blank]*, I finally managed to do something I have been wanting to do pretty much since the onset of the past global nightmare of ___________ [fill in the blank].

Read more

Where one scholar is in error and another in scholarly license

Yes, this is yet another entry for the Ungeziefer file… One where scholar and author Rebecca Schuman, who is obviously highly intelligent and supremely credible as evidenced by her skepticism (likeminded with yours truly of course) of Michael Hoffman translating Kafka’s Ungezeifer as a cockroach, as discussed in her 2017 Literary Hub article I Made … Read more

If it’s Ungeziefer why not just call it Ungeziefer?!

Okay, admittedly, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer so please take my perplexity for what it’s worth… About a plug nickel, that’s what. But anyway, I know it’s easy for a one-language knuklehead like me to complain, but if in “The Metamorphosis” Kafka writes that when Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled … Read more

The Graduate by Charles Webb – A Review

BOOK | FICTION | LITERARYTHE GRADUATE by Charles WebbRATING: ★ ★ ★ ★ When The Graduate, a book published in 1963 by recently deceased author Charles Webb, popped up as a Kindle Unlimited recommendation the other day, I thought to myself, why not? I mean, shouldn’t every fan of the movie version, a film which … Read more