Reviews – Tate Street

In the spotlight

A Prison Wherever He Turned (Stoner by John Williams)

The plot of John Williams’ 1965 novel, Stoner (NYRB Classics, 2006): Young man becomes assistant professor at University of Missouri, lives unhappy life, has undistinguished career, dies. You can hardly be blamed if you don’t find this particularly enticing, but make no mistake: Stoner (last name of the protagonist—sorry to disappoint) is a work of almost unbearable beauty. [...]

Tender as the Night (Tell Everyone I Said Hi by Chad Simpson)

In a word: tender. That’s how we’d describe the stories in Chad Simpson‘s new collection, Tell Everyone I Said Hi (Iowa), the winner of the 2012 John [...]
Suddenly, A Review (Suddenly, A Knock on the Door: Stories by Etgar Keret)

On the surface, Etgar Keret’s stories aren’t so much stories as they are fabular anecdotes that unfold with the concision and wit of a fatally funny joke (many of [...]

Novel Fridays: Structure

2 Comments

Happy Friday, novelists! I hope you had successful weeks. Once again, we will be delving into the different techniques we use when writing novels. Now you may have been wondering in our discussion of time last week: what about flashbacks? Or flash forwards? How are the events of my novel best arranged? Should they only proceed in sequential order? Or in other words: what should the structure of my novel be? [...]

Favorite Poems: Wheatley, Carroll

Beware the Jabberwock! In this installment of Favorite Poem Project documentaries, we watch a mother and daughter read Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky." We'll also listen to Cornelius Eady share the strength of "On Being Brought from Africa to America" by Phillis Wheatley. [...]
Favorite Poems: Hopkins, Dickinson
Favorite Poems: Turner, Wyatt
Favorite Poems: Johnson, Owen

A Prison Wherever He Turned (Stoner by John Williams)

July 22, 2017

The plot of John Williams’ 1965 novel, Stoner (NYRB Classics, 2006): Young man becomes assistant professor at University of Missouri, lives unhappy life, has undistinguished career, dies. You can hardly be blamed if you don’t find this particularly enticing, but make no mistake: Stoner (last name of the protagonist—sorry to disappoint) is a work of almost unbearable beauty. [...]
I’ll Come Back Once You’re Dead (Henri Duchemin and His Shadows by Emmanual Bove, trans. Alyson Waters)
So Fearsome a Blue; or, From Grandmother’s House We Go (Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stifter, trans. Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore)
The American Uncanny (American Innovations: Stories by Rivka Galchen)

Copyright 2010-2015 Tate Street Blog at WordPress.com.