Ellison happens to be a personal favorite. Ellison was primarily a short story writer and essayist so his books are mostly collections.
A recent “best of” collection.
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A couple older midcareer collections both excellent.
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Enjoy!
Excellent. Thanks so much.
I can get the Kindle version straightaway so the Greatest Hits it will be. I’ll get started once I finish the Kafka biography.
I don’t know how many interviews I saw with him but they were all so engaging – I could have spent a whole day (instead of a good part of the morning) watching them. I expect I’m going to really enjoy his stories.
When I was a child growing up in rural Georgia we had a neighbor down the street whose land backed up against a large publicly owned stand of woods. At the edge of his property there was a trail that ran off into the forest. We didn’t know these neighbors very well, an older retired couple, so I couldn’t just cross their property and go exploring like I wanted to. Besides there were plenty of other places to play in the summer which back then we had off from school – three glorious months! But the thought of that trail seized my imagination as a child and I often dreamed of mysterious places deep in the woods and of what I might find there.
I just finished Robert Holdstock’s ** you do not have permission to see this link ** and I think that childhood dream prepared me in some way for this wonderful book. Because that’s what it’s about on a purely existential level. Wandering off into the woods. But like all magical places, Ryhope Wood is bigger on the inside than on the outside, not just in space but in time as well.
Jeepers the Brits seem to have this kind of literary lyricism encoded in their DNA. Especially their fantasy writers who draw from a very very deep well. (Americans have our own qualities; the literary critic Harry Levin claimed that the purest form of American literary expression was the phantasmogoria; Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Paul Bowles, Shirley Jackson, etc.) When a Brit writes well nobody writes better.
Holdstock is also the master of what not to say, causing one’s imagination to leap up and flow into the emptiness provided, not a lack but an opportunity. He is a master of the dream logic of myth, a world where one can be chopping wood for a fire one minute and then being challenged to a sword fight by a masked demon the next, the transition seamless. This book is about telling stories and realizing that you are part of a story written a thousand years before you were born by a people you never even heard of.
And no, I’m not going to tell you what this book is “about”. This is one of those journeys that the less you prepare for in advance, the more you’ll enjoy it. Don’t be one of those dreary folks who has to have every moment of their itinerary mapped out before they take a single step.
There is a sequel. It concerns one of the characters in this book whose fate is left rather mysterious. By all accounts that book is even better than this one. But right now that would be too much. I think what I will do is wait a while, reread this one and then read the sequel.
I began reading ISBN 978-0-8203-3425-7
Baptized in Blood, The Religion of the Lost Cause 1865-1920 many years ago.
This was all during the big thing about the old confederate flag that happened two presidencies ago. I haven’t finished it yet. There’s really know way to know if all of it is historical fact or not. But it was somewhat interesting as a perspective on Christianity as it had existed here in the USA.
He is a master of the dream logic of myth, a world where one can be chopping wood for a fire one minute and then being challenged to a sword fight by a masked demon the next, the transition seamless. This book is about telling stories and realizing that you are part of a story written a thousand years before you were born by a people you never even heard of.
Wonderful. I shall get it; I can hardly wait.
(Americans have our own qualities; the literary critic Harry Levin claimed that the purest form of American literary expression was the phantasmogoria; Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Paul Bowles, Shirley Jackson, etc.) When a Brit writes well nobody writes better.
I absolutely love the short stories of Hawthorne: Young Goodman Brown, Rappaccini’s Daughter, etc.
I’ve never heard of Paul Bowles. What would you recommend of his?
Ah Paul Bowles! Like any serious junkie I am happy to share my addictions. I think the reason Bowles is not more well known is that he was not very prolific; he wrote four novels and his collected short stories can fill a single volume. Mainly though I think it was because he was an expat, living in Tangier from the late 40s until his death in 1999.
Undoubtedly the place to start is with his masterpiece ** you do not have permission to see this link **. Bowles does have two volumes devoted to his work in the Library of America but while those onyx slabs look good on a bookshelf they’re awkward to carry around. Give me a ratty old paperback any day. I’m a reader not a collector.
Audio recordings exist. First, I would suggest you go to the Bandcamp streaming site where you can hear recordings for free and then purchase and download as you wish.
Producer/musician Bill Laswell got Bowles into a proper recording studio a few years before Bowles died, created some ambient sound backing tracks, and had Bowles read excerpts from his work.
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Go to track #3, the title track, and if that 3 minutes 36 seconds doesn’t suck you in nothing will. (Listen on headphones.)
When you finish, let us know what you think.
I first encountered Lewis in high school where we had to read Babbit. However, at the time I was more interested in reading On the Road and such. Being totally clueless, I didn’t read it as a satire.
Later when I was making my way through Thomas Wolfe’s novels, I came across Lewis’ Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech (** you do not have permission to see this link **) where Wolfe is mentioned so decided to read more of him. I never did get to Elmer Gantry.
Just started Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis. I’ve always loved the 1960 movie with Burt Lancaster, ever since I first saw it as a kid. I’m told the book is rather different, so wanted to investigate.
Same here. Love the movie, especially Arthur Kennedy’s performance as the worldy-wise reporter. His relationship with Gantry is one of the movie’s strengths. “Frenemies” who understand each other completely. Jean Simmon’s best role. And what can I say about a young Shirley Jones as the proverbial ‘whore with a heart of gold’? Va-Va-Va-Voom!
My understanding is that the Sister Sharon episode is only a part of the novel. It goes on to describe Gantry’s other adventures.
Speaking of old moves made from books, I just found a used copy of James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, one of my favorite old movies. The ending always breaks my heart but of course we were driven from Eden and can never go back to stay. I’ve always wanted to read the original novel.
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