Monthly Archives: February 2009
Closely Observed Trains
Closely Observed Trains, also known as Closely Watched Trains, is a 1965 novella by Czech author Bohumil Hrabal. It is his most famous work, in large part due to an extremely successful (I understand, I’ve not yet seen it) 1966 … Continue reading
Remember that life of this world is but a sport and a pastime
A Sport and a Pastime, first published in 1967, is the second James Salter novel I have read, and as different to the previous one (The Hunters, reviewed here) as it could be. Different in story that is, different in … Continue reading
Filed under Salter, James, US Literature
God, it’s funny, being a woman!
Good Morning, Midnight, by Jean Rhys Actually, going on Jean Rhys’s 1939 novel Good Morning, Midnight, it’s not funny at all. Jean Rhys is a new writer to me, who I discovered through John Self’s blog The Asylum. John recommended … Continue reading
Filed under Modernist Fiction, Paris, Penguin Modern Classics, Personal canon, Rhys, Jean
The hopeless emptiness
Revolutionary Road is the first novel by American writer Richard Yates. Published in 1962, it is an unsparing analysis both of the failure of a particular marriage and more generally of the human desire to create myths so as to … Continue reading
Filed under US Literature, Yates, Richard
