Travels in the Scriptorium
by Paul Auster.
A peculiar, but enjoyable, read. I can’t say I really understood what was going on in this novel, but I found the story well told and I was propelled along by the narrative. I was thorougly impressed by Auster’s New York Trilogy when I read it and I remember it being similarly mystifying.
Read MoreThe American Future
By Simon Schama
This is a great reminder of what America has been, promised to be, and could still be.
At first I worried that Schama was going to dwell on the events of the recent past, the turn of the century, and the current situation that is all too familiar. It has been covered at length. But he does a great job as the book progresses of painting vivid pictures of the United States at other critical junctures to bring into relief the modern age. It is the priceless gift of history to give context to the present and to show that there is no inevitability to the course we’re on; it hasn’t always been so.
Here’s just a brief, stirring sample, where Schama describes Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia:
Read MoreSentences like Jefferson’s great coda [to Notes on the State of Virginia] are what should be the text that schoolchildren throughout the American republic ought to recite each day instead of the numb, and, since the fifties, mindlessly reverent Pledge of Allegiance. Then they would understand, right away, the proper meaning of their nation’s existence. “Truth is great,” wrote the man who could be hypocrite, egotist, utopian, beady-eyed stratagem-maker, all in the same week; yet if he had written only the following, he would have still warranted the gratitude of posterity. It is the unflinching answer to moral and immoral bullying (whether by Americans or others); to the sweaty insecurity of the fanatics, to the secret policemen and thug-triumvirs. It is why it is never sensible to give up on America.
“Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself…she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”
Be Cool
By Elmore Leonard. Was looking for some light summer reading. He’s very good at what he does. From Wikipedia: His advice to writers also includes the hint, “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.”
It reads like a Quentin Tarantino movie (I know Quentin is a big fan) – everyone is a wise guy.
Read MoreAmsterdam
By Ian McEwan.
In his book How Fiction Works, the critic James Wood singles out McEwan’s Atonement as a good example of changing time signatures in prose and “putting oneself in another’s shoes”. I found the novel dwelt a little too much in the interior lives of the characters for my taste and I found I lost interest. Perhaps the fact that the main characters are young, aristocratic females in 1940’s England had something to do with it, not giving me too much to sympathize with, though I suppose good fiction should be universal. Amsterdam has a broader outlook I think – I found it much more readable.
Read MoreThe Plot Against America
By Philip Roth.
A really interesting book, the kind I love to read. With a blend of history, politics, ethics and morality woven into the prose. He creates a palpable sense of dread.
Read MoreThe Shadow Boxer
Just finished reading The Shadow Boxer, Steven Heighton’s first novel.
It is an enjoyable read, becoming a page-turner as the reader gets drawn into the main character’s torment.
I’m inspired and a little daunted by the richness of the prose, so densely packed with poetry and evocative metaphor. It’s interesting, but not surprising, how you can so easily spot the novels of writers who are poets first. I’ve heard Helen Humphreys say that she doesn’t write so much stand-alone poetry anymore because it has an outlet in her fiction. Her novels are infused and embroidered with poetry. As with Steven Heighton’s prose.
The passion and resolute romanticism of the protagonist, Sevigne, reminds me a lot of a friend, a poet, also living and writing in Toronto.
The intense and gripping description of Sevigne’s year on Rye Island, nearly freezing to death, evoked the stories of the early northern explorers, Franklin, Hornsby, Edgar Christian, et al, that I read about recently in Whalley’s book.
Also, I very much enjoyed the descriptions of Northern Ontario and in particular The Soo. I have many fond memories of The Soo, home to most of my extended family on my mother’s side.
What I appreciate most about Steven Heighton, in everything I’ve read by him including The Shadow Boxer, is his dedication to the finer human qualities, while acknowledging the prevalance of cynicism, irony, and all the many impediments to decency people face every day. He chooses to highlight the occasions of righteousness anyway, despite the fact it might be considered unfashionable or quaint.
This earnestness, so refreshing and so welcome, is most evident, I think, in his collection of essays entitled The Admen Move On Lhasa. The trait is there in his fiction as well, it’s just more subtle.
Read MoreMorgan Wade
Morgan Wade is a fiction writer living in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. His short stories and poems have been published in Canadian literary journals and anthologies, including, The New Quarterly and The Nashwaak Review. His debut novel, The Last Stoic was long listed for the ReLit Award for Fiction.
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