Sponsored by the Harvard Writing Program and the Harvard Summer School, the event was introduced, perhaps humorously, to the audience as a “meeting of German–American relations.” In reality, it was a more of a showcase in differences about each country’s historical imagination.
Book Review: Robert Walser’s Big Small Thoughts — Modest But Miraculous
In his prose and poetry, Swiss writer Robert Walser revolts from the chaos of modernity, engaging in extreme subjectivity only to confess to the heresy that is the self, choosing to revel in the simplicity of the rural life. Not for truth, but for the sake of a fleeting rapture.
Book Review: Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence Opens
Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s new museum, named for and based on his 2008 novel, The Museum of Innocence, has opened in Istanbul.
Book Review: Matinee Modernism — Celebrity and Academia Converge and It Isn’t Pretty
What could have been a readable, informative, pleasurable book that would, much like Woody Allen’s recent film MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, enhance our experience of some of the modernist figures we adore wallows too often in brain-dead literary theory.
Book Review: Herman Melville and the Solace of Movement
“Life, you see, is a lonely business . . . When there is a storm, it’s best to turn into the teeth of it. Don’t fly away, allowing an evil wind to come upon you from the stern. That’s our weakest part. We’re rib cage and metal up front. The bow is always best. Head […]
Book Interview: Sailing Through the Mind of Herman Melville
In his novel “The Passages of H. M.: A Novel of Herman Melville” author Jay Parini combines extensive research from existing biographies with a concrete evocation of the nineteenth century writer’s world and mind. We ask the writer a few questions about Melville, and whether there would be a market for his books today. By […]
Book Review: Green’s Garden of Delights
David Green’s stories make for compelling literature—the kind of reading which poses a challenge today because of its exploration of psychological complexity, enigma, confusion, and suspense. The Garden of Love and Other Stories, by David Green. The Pen & Anvil Press, $14.95 Reviewed by Christopher M. Ohge. The romantic poetry of William Blake first came […]
Fuse Flash: Melville Matters — A Pit-Stop in Pittsfield
On August 1st a group of dedicated Melvilleans gathered at the author’s Arrowhead home in the morning to commemorate his 191st birthday by hiking to Monument Mountain. This trip is meant to reenact the hike Melville took on August 5, 1850, which led to his meeting Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose short story collection Mosses from an […]