Writing about writing and reading
In another war novel by Böll that does not feature battle or action, a young soldier, Private Andreas, boards a train and is immediately overcome with the certainty that he will soon die. As the train rolls on, Andreas' certainty grows, and he even begins to narrow down exactly the time and place that he …
Can a book be a work of art? The answer is yes, and I've read it. The only way to read this novel is to do so the same way you might look at a painting. A painting captures a moment, a feeling, a tone, it brings thoughts to your mind and makes you wonder …
A friend linked me this article about the squeamish hesitance of writers to call their books sci-fi, and the reputation sci-fi has for being cheap or base entertainment. Some of this rings true for me, too, even as a (ex?) sci-fi fan and writer myself. Their example of Faber is accurate. I remember when I …
Hello world! I've been having a hard time writing lately, but I'm happy to say my funk is over, and I'm producing fictional words again! I've gone back to a project I was working on last year, and I've rediscovered the thread, which is not something I'm usually able to do when I'm away from …
Much like the others I've read by this author, this book deals heavily with memory, loss, and--more directly than the others--the holocaust. The narrator recounts his experiences with four characters, in four sections of the book. Each character is an emigrant from Germany, and each, in some way, seems to want to forget some aspect …
Jonas David 