A Question of Attitude
Another book review for China, this time about William Boyd's novel "Any Human Heart"
Another book review for China, this time about William Boyd's novel "Any Human Heart"
A short article on Orhan Pamuk's novel Snow I wrote for a chinese book review.
Just read my first Alice Munro story. Very impressed. The wonders of a quietly shifting focus, not following the story but somehow miraculously driving it, on and on, laying out a web of meaning and consequence while you are following it, with the main movement happening like behind a veil of more static but very telling and carefully arranged scenery. Sheer magic. Reminded me of Stewart O'Nans wonderful novel "A World Away", not only in time and setting but also in its slow tempo and skillfully crafted layers - only much more condensed.
Munro surely is a writer's writer, like Jonathan Franzen implied.
I'm reading Updike's recent Krasner-Pollock-Novel "Seek My Face", in very slow pace. Pick it up again now and then, with long intermissions. I like it, though. It's a semi-fictional reflection on 20th century US art through the eyes of an artist, and it's an intelligent deconstruction of art critics' contortions, a welcome demystification. Many characters are easily identifiable, but in a peculiar move that tells a lot about his bias, Updike merges the whole pop art personnel, from Rauschenberg, Johns, Lichtenstein up to Warhol, into one person, Chavetz-Krasner's 2nd husband Guy Holloway.