My father still lives back the road past the weir in the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day to see is he dead and every day he lets me down. He hasn't yet missed a day of letting me down.
The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
Literature makes us better noticers of life; we get to practice on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature; which in turn makes us better readers of life. And so on and on. You have only to teach literature to realize that most young readers are poor noticers. I know from my own old books, wantonly annotated twenty years ago when I was a student, that I routinely underlined for approval details and images and metaphors that strike me now as commonplace, while serenely missing things that now seem wonderful. We grow, as readers, and twenty- year-olds are relative virgins. They have not yet read enough literature to be taught by it how to read it.
A great deal of nonsense is written every day about characters in fiction - from the side of those who believe too much in character and from the side of those who believe too little. Those who believe too much have an iron set of prejudices about what characters are:we should get to "know" them; they should not be "stereotypes;" they should have an"inside" as well as an outside, depth as well as surface; they should "grow" and " develop", and they should be nice. So they should be pretty much like us.
Kan denne gamle tråden være til hjelp?
Fallet
(14. august, 1793)
Enken har gått hit selv, ingen har tvunget henne til det. Hun har banket lusene ut av de fineste klærne sine og tatt dem på seg, vasket håret i felleshusets urinbalje og bundet det opp. Hun har bedt en stille bønn, taust iakttatt av sine hedenske bofeller, skrapt det sotblandede fettet av kinnene og spist det gode måltidet de har satt frem til henne. Så har hun gått hit, hele veien opp, båret på lette skritt. Nå sitter hun her, nesten glad, forventningsfull, het i kinnene, ute på kanten med beina tekkelig innunder seg, på enkemaner, slik hun pleier å sitte der hjemme på den vesle sidebrisken under vindusgluggen.
Profetene i Evighetsfjorden av Kim Leine.
Jeg tar meg den frihet og linker deg opp mot et intervju med Stefansson.
Og enig med deg - Stefansson står på egne bein!
Siden så mange leser Stefansson's Heaven and Hell - legger jeg ved en link til et intervju med forfatteren - som Paul Engels gjorde for The Maclehose Press.
Two sons were drowned in a distant ocean, and one son and a daughter had disappeared to a land even more remote, America, which is farther than death.
A woman should leave her hands on the table and not rest them in her lap during dinner to avoid giving the impression that hanky-panky is going on below.
Levitte understood the key to seduction in diplomacy as well as other areas of life: to find common ground and shared values and build on them. Avoid confrontation and finger-pointing even if you are convinced you are right. Never let the other side lose face. Instead, get the other side to believe it is the winner.
Without France, the world would be alone.
- Victor Hugo
She dressed badly.
- Francoise Giroud, the writer, upon learning of the death of Simone de Beauvoir.
Her arbeides det aktivt for at norsk litteratur også skal kunne leses i ny skrud.
As a child he had known instinctively that it was always better to tell a partial truth with a willing aspect than to tell a perfect truth in a defensive way.
Denne boken hadde en vakker, intens råskap og et samspill mellom mennesker og natur som bergtok meg omtrent fra første side. :)
Lykke til med felleslesingen!
Et enkelt valg. Ingen bøker kan måle seg med J.K.Stefansson's Heaven and Hell. i februar!
Jeg bruker den tiden boken tar, enten det er en ettermiddag, en dag, en uke, en måned eller flere år!
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer "yes" without having asked any clear question.
- Albert Camus, The Fall
Stefansson - han er sgu sin egen!
Et merkelig vesen.
En klok mann har sagt at nest etter det å miste sin mor, er det få ting som er sunnere for små barn enn det å miste sin far. Selv om jeg på ingen måte kan være enig i disse ordene, faller det meg likevel ikke inn å si dem direkte imot. Selv ville jeg uttrykt denne læren uten agg til verden, eller kanskje heller uten den smerte som ligger i ordenes blotte klang.
Brekkukotkrønike av Halldor Laxness