by Rob McKean | Mar 23, 2020 | Lord of Misrule |
As I have been reading my way through Powell’s Bookstore “25 Books to Read Before You Die, World Edition, 2016,” I have been choosing my selections from the list somewhat randomly. For some time I’ve had my eye on Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl and...
by Rob McKean | Mar 10, 2020 | Lord of Misrule |
Czechoslovakian writer Bohumil Hrabal comes out of a long tradition of wicked satirists. Think of Rabelais, Swift, Voltaire, and, in our era, Günter Grass (The Tin Drum), Raymond Coover (The Public Burning), and Terry Southern (The Magic Christian). Or, even more...
by Rob McKean | Feb 25, 2020 | Lord of Misrule |
Eileen Chang is, for me, a problematic writer. She is a very good writer, and I want to like her writing more than I do. The reasons are complicated. But first, let’s establish some facts on the ground. Chang was born in Shanghai, 1920, and raised bilingually, Chinese...
by Rob McKean | Jan 21, 2020 | Lord of Misrule |
“It is not the voice that commands the story; it is the ear.” One thing that helped me decide when I contemplated doing a series of blog posts based on PowellsBooks Blog, “25 Books to Read Before You Die, World Edition, 2016,” was seeing on the list a book by Italo...
by Rob McKean | Jan 3, 2020 | Lord of Misrule |
Ryunosuke Akutagawa, one of Japan’s most celebrated writers, cut his life short at age 35, by suicide (1892-1927). During his short career of 12-15 years Akutagawa (pronounced Dyu-noss-ke Ak-ta-ga-wa) produced stories that continue to be read seriously both in Japan...
by Rob McKean | Dec 3, 2019 | Lord of Misrule |
It is 1925 in Ilheus, a sleepy town in the province of Bahia in southern Brazil, and Nacib the Arab’s longstanding cook—for him personally as well as for his café—has up and left him for family matters, as she has threatened to do for years. On this same day that...
