Yearly Archives: 2010

On Memory and Fiction

In part four of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, aging author Briony Tallis is revealed to be the author of the novel that comprises the previous three sections of the book.  She is dying of vascular dementia, and that this, her last … Continue reading

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Best of Times, Worst of Times

A couple of weeks ago, my day-job required me to fly to Chicago for a day to attend a meeting.  I’d been to Chicago on business a couple of times before, but on those trips I was visiting companies that … Continue reading

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Shackles, Chains, and Canon

In his essay, “In Praise of Dead White Men,” Lindsay Johns argues that efforts to make education more “relevant” to black people can be both patronizing and harmful, and that western literary canon should be taught to everyone.  While I … Continue reading

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The Oral Tradition

Last week, I traveled up to Massachusetts to attend the memorial service for my uncle, John Juergen  Bubbers, who died in May after a long illness.  I was reunited with my cousins most of whom I’ve not seen in many … Continue reading

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The Art of the Novella: The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth

Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer was first published in two parts in The New Yorker in 1979.  Later that year it was published in book form by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.  It was the first book of his Zuckerman Bound … Continue reading

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