FFB: A GREAT DELIVERANCe, Elizabeth George

 

This is the first in the 22 books of the Inspector Lynley and Barbara Havers series.I read many of them over the years and saw the TV series as well. They always managed to give you a good, complicated case with the interesting personal lives of the detectives. I believe a second series of the original novels has begun. This one begins with finding a woman sitting with an axe, claiming she had killed her father. Maybe my favorite detective series. 

Short Story Wednesday, THE COLLECTED STORIES OF ERNEST HEMINGWAY

 

Ed Gorman (from the archives)

Forgotten Books: The Collected Stories of Ernest Hemingway

If you grew up in the Forties or Fifties it was impossible to imagine that the literary luster of Ernest Hemingway would ever dim. I've never
 

known of a writer as imitated (usually badly) as ole Papa.

He loved it. He carefully crafted the public persona of adventurer and man's man the press and the people loved. Novels such as A Farewell To Arms and For Whom The Bell Tolls outsold the books of his contemporaries.

But time and taste caught up with him and we now see that Hemingway's novels weren't quite as good as we once thought. He certainly had no Gatsby to brag of nor even a Grapes of Wrath by the despised Steinbeck; Papa believed he was a terrible writer. For me the only novel of his worth reading now is The Sun Also Rises. It's not a great novel but it's fascinating one and much truer to the real Hemingway than the novels he wrote afterward.

But then there are the short stories. Back in the day his collected stories were referred to with great reverence as The First Forty-Nine.
Many of them were reprinted dozens if not hundreds of times around the world, textbooks included. They still deserve the reverence paid them back then.

From his story of death and dying ("A Clean, Well-Lighted Place") to his sad and ironic tale of a soldier who came back from the First World War too late for the parades ("Soldier's Home:) to the stories set in Upper Michigan this is American literature at its finest. This was Hemingway before he became Papa--the confused boy-man who went to war and then set himself up in Paris to write.

In numerous stories here he proves himself the equal of Faulkner (whom he saw as his main competition--he'd already arrogantly written off his old friend (and the guy who got him his Scribner contract) Fitzgerald) in experimenting with point of view. The line, as several critics
mentioned at the time, went from Stephen Crane to Mark Twain to Hemingway, that pure American voice. If you read Crane's The Blue Hotel before you reading Hemingway's Collected Stories you'll hear the echoes throughout start the book.

For readers and writers alike, this is one book that should be in every serious collection. There was no more vital and powerful voice than
Hemingway's in his early stories (and I don't include The Old Man And The Sea which I never much liked; way too self-consciously Important). Today they're just as pure and perfect as they were when first published. All hail Hemingway.

 

TracyK 

JerryHouse 

Monday, Monday

 And we did. A great day for the country and we haven't had many lately.

Just finished DODGE CITY by Patrick DeWitt, so different from THE SISTER BROTHERS but both were great. Now I am listening to THE LIBRARIANIST, which also seems good. Have read all the stories in THE BEST DOG IN THE WORLD. Conclusion: DOGS ARE GREAT.

Saw A TALENT FOR MURDER. Helen Mirren was Patricia Highsmith-what a great actress. Also saw the Korean film POSSIBLE LOVE on Netflix. It was very long so I watched it over two nights. Watching THE LOWDOWN on Hulu and THE GILDED AGE on HBO. About to start BLACK DOVES on Netflix

Went to a lecture about the election results. 

What about you?

 

 

FFB: BLACK WATER, Joyce Carol Oates

Black Water is one of my favorite Joyce Carol Oates novels. My husband and Megan went to hear her speak at Borders Bookstore in Ann Arbor. I wonder if Megan dreamed at 21 that she would know Oates one day. 

It is a roman A clef, using the Kennedy Chappaquiddick incident as its inspiration, a bad word for it in this case.. It is a very spooky book with the water being very evocative. 

Short Story Wednesday

 Although I have never had a dog, I have always been interested in dog stories. After reading Paul Yoon's novel ETNA I wanted to read about his story in here. Oscar seemed like a special dog. Indeed, all the dog I have read about do. If there is a sameness to the stories in THE BEST DOG IN THE WORLD, its born out of all of these writers falling in love with their dog. Etna is written from a dog's point of view and you can either get with that or not. I had no trouble with it. My favorite novel about a dog is Sigrid Nunez's THE FRIEND but all of the dogs in this volume made their case. 

George Kelley 

Jerry House 

Monday, Monday

 Nice surprise in the mail today. I also read ETNA (Paul Yoon) (Fabulous about a bomb-sniffing dog trying to go home), and am reading DODGE CITY by Patrick Dewitt. 

Movie-wise I saw the enigmatic YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING, and WICKER, also surprising. 

Had a great time handing out candy at Josh's house to over 200 kids. Fabulous costumes. We ran out of candy an hour before it ended, 6-8. One kid was dressed as a pimp in a purple suit with a top hat and a sparking cane. Yikes. 

Finished THE DIPLOMAT, which I loved. The six main actors are so terrific in this. Watched the MATTHEW PERRY doc, which was so sad. Also a great doc on SCTV. I can't believe they made each show for $7000 with no writers. A third one on Norm McDonald and started one on Maria Bamford, who I have scarcely heard of. This is the era of the documentary.Getting ready for THE GILDED AGE, BLACK DOVES, and NOCTURNE.

Weather continues to be gorgeous.

What's new there?