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Beauty and Pity – George Konrád’s The Case Worker
I use Grammarly's grammar corrector because it's like flossing – too easy. I don't have an excuse not to. George Konrád’s novel, The Case Worker, is a difficult read. Konrád’s prose is dense. Detail...
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Russell Wilson - The Blue Collar Artist
Image courtesy of ESPN Making art is hard work.Being an artist means dedication to your craft. It means waking up every morning to spend a few hours on your craft, typing until the sun crests over the...
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The Passing Terror: J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians
Waiting for the Barbarians - Penguin Edition Early on in J. M. Coetzee’s novel, Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee makes it known what his narrator’s “deal” is -- to thieve a term I first heard from...
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Writing Horror: Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry
Isaac Babel’s collection of linked short stories, Red Cavalry, take place during the bloody Polish-Soviet war where Babel served as a journalist. Babel’s stories are riddled with text that brings to...
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Words Fresh, Words New, Words Scrubbed and Words Blue: Gary Lutz’s Divorcer
"These days, I launder anything before I say it. I make sure there’s something still sudsing between the words." Gary Lutz succeeds in doing what most writers wish they could do. He makes words —...
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Voices from Our Past that Echo Today - Beyond the Veil by Fatima Mernissi
Fatima Mernissi’s Beyond the Veil explores male-female dynamics in Morocco. It is a book that was originally published in 1975, but what is enthralling (at least to me) is how current this feels. It...
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Revolutionary Literature: George Orwell's Why I Write
I picked up George Orwell’s short book, Why I Write, at Librarie des Colonnes (Probably the best bookstore in all of Morocco. If you’re ever in Tangier, make sure you stroll down the boulevard from...
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Fuggin’ It Up - China Miéville’s The City & The City
I once read that Toni Morrison made it a point to read at least one detective novel a year. It was her feeling that detective novels taught her to write, to keep the plot moving forward and keep the...
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What Must Be Seen: Haruki Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tasaki and His Years...
I have been an unabashed lover of Haruki Murakami's writing ever since I first picked up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in 2010. Admittedly, I was late to the game. By 2010, Murakami was already known by...
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The Spectre of Alexander Wolf by Gaito Gazdanov
I did it. I joined a book club. I believe this means I have officially either become middle-aged, accepted my middle-aged-ness, or maybe just missed the roundtable discussion of some great reading...
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