All holy books are works of fiction.
Saw this bumper sticker today (on the way to church, of course). I disagree with some of this dude’s core assumptions—especially regarding the nature, truth, and value of fiction!
All holy books are works of fiction.
Saw this bumper sticker today (on the way to church, of course). I disagree with some of this dude’s core assumptions—especially regarding the nature, truth, and value of fiction!
My good friend Brad wrote about Mississippi’s Yazoo River, where attempts to prevent flooding threaten to have dramatic unintended consequences elsewhere in the river basin.
Just wrote a long post on awkwardness in Vodolazkin’s “novel” Laurus — mjkaul.com/2018/05/0…
From the NYRB, a fascinating essay on Berenice Abbott, jazz-age photographer in NYC and Paris.
Time, place, and circumstance: they are like three balls that you toss in the air, and they control your life.
An exceptional essay by Garnette Cadogan, “Due North”—an oddly edited, but also delightful and profound, essay on walking NYC from the Upper East Side to the South Bronx.
These photos of Lake Baikal are absolutely stunning (though I could do without any of the ones with people in them).
The further I go in Laurus, the more I see Dostoevsky all over the place. That’s not surprising—you can’t write a work of fiction about Orthodoxy set in Russia and without reflecting deeply on Dostoevsky. In some ways, it’s as if Laurus is a sequel to The Brothers Karamazov, with Arseny an Alyosha figure shaped by a holy elder who dies early on (Christopher / Fr. Zosima). Moreover, death hangs over both books, intensely.
Addendum to my Cecil Taylor post: Ethan Iverson’s essay on Taylor is remarkable, and does justice to Taylor’s sui generis work.
Like every post on Iverson’s blog, it’s essential reading.
Latern Waste; or, April in Minnesota
I’m finally starting Eugene Vodolazkin’s Laurus, in anticipation of the Anselm House book night in a week and a half. So far (50 pp in), it’s wonderfully strange, its medieval-modern form heavily dependent on pastiche and parataxis for its effects. I’ll hopefully write more soon.