Vincent Czyz

Book Review: Robert Glick’s “Two Californias” — An Affinity for Fragmentation

July 15, 2020
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Two Californias is full of humor, good writing, and thoughtful angles on human existence—with zombies thrown in for good measure.

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Literary Remembrance: Homage to Guy Davenport — Brilliance Worth Savoring

May 18, 2020
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The fifteenth anniversary of the death of a grievously neglected writer whom critics almost universally acclaim a creative genius.

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Book Review: “My Red Heaven” — The City as a Mirror for Consciousness

April 29, 2020
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Few contemporary authors much care to tussle with the proverbial mot juste; Lance Olsen insists on it, and over the course of fifteen novels, five books of nonfiction, and five short story collections, has shown himself a master of prose style.

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Literary Reconsideration: A.S.Byatt’s “Possession”

March 28, 2020
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Tour de force? Not quite. Joycean? Perhaps in the way contemporary individuals overlap with ancient, mythical counterparts.

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Arts Remembrance: A Tribute to Poet and Writer John Ash

January 21, 2020
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We were both English-speaking ex-patriots living in Istanbul, and John Ash’s poetry spoke eloquently to that shared experience.

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Book Review: A Biography of John Berger — A Seminal Artist and Thinker

December 26, 2019
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If you have not read John Berger, by the end of this biography you’re likely to feel an urgent need to pick up one of his books.

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Book Review: “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee” — Dreaming a New Dream for Native Americans

September 27, 2019
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In this remarkable and timely book, David Treuer is determined that Native American history not be seen as a “catalog of pain.”

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Book Review: “Five Cities” — Urban Meditations on Turkish History and Culture

June 27, 2019
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Five Cities is a species of psychogeography, a deep map, that weighs the effects of topography, urban environments, and monuments of the past on mood and perspective.

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Book Review: “The Feral Detective” — Strictly From Hunger

May 14, 2019
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Farcical fight and sex scenes might be forgivable, but the “mystery” is so barely there it utterly fails to engage — and that’s lethal to a novel in this genre.

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Book Review: “The Ruins of Ani” — Into the Mystic

April 19, 2019
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The Ruins of Ani illuminates one of those rare places that leaves visitors feeling they might have to dust off the word mystical to describe the experience.

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