An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
In these days of intense partisanship, when disgust at our fellow citizens runs high, it’s been a good counteractive to listen to David McCullough read his account of 1776, when a rag-tail army, dirty, foul-mouthed, and cold, eventually forced the … Continued
I’ve been noticing a shift in heat and days, the congregation of birds at the free-standing feeder, now full of chickadees and red and gold finches, as the fledglings forage for themselves and parents fatten up for the cold. Summer’s … Continued
William Faulkner drew the title for his 1932 novel from a comment his wife made while they were sitting on their porch, “There’s something different about the light in August.” That was in the depths of the Great Depression. Here … Continued
What are the two most powerful human impulses–after food and sex? I’d vote for motion. Let’s try pilgrimage and conquest. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales gives voice, certainly for the first time in English, to the charm of communal travel toward a … Continued
Bonnie Jo Campbell’s short story collection titled American Salvage recently caught my attention because a friend of many years and few actual visits recently drove me through rural Michigan where many of the stories take place. My friend Irene (not … Continued
As our government process gets messier and looser and more unpredictable, I’ve been considering the messiness of fiction. Poetry, back in the ages, had the rhythm of oral declamation, almost like singing. Each line or “period” was shaped by the … Continued
I’ve been reading James Carroll’s 1996 memoir An American Requiem: God, My Father and the War that Came Between Us. The phrase, “a child-changed father,” comes toward the end of the book, after Carroll’s three-star general father (also a lawyer) … Continued
I’m reading James Carroll’s memoir: An American Requiem which won the National Book Award in 1996. Sometimes when a friend passes along a book found in the “used bin” at 2nd Hand Books, it’s a keeper. Carroll grew up in … Continued
I’m just getting around to reading one of the finest works of history written in the 20th century–Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror. It crossed my attention, probably from a New York Times Book Review, in 1978, when it was first … Continued
The drive north to Lutsen and back is relatively easy in early May. Road construction already begun, but hardly any traffic on the road. Still I had plenty of time to listen to two short books on disk. Driving up … Continued