Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
Books written by American authors. Usually written in English.
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Any anthology usually ends up being a mixed bag in terms of content. There will be things you like and things you don’t. When a famous artist, writer, or illustrator that you admire is asked to select stories for an anthology it can be an extra special experience.
I was first exposed to Nightmare Alley via TCM’s Noir Alley and the 1947 film starring Tyrone Power in one of his few villain roles. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, though it is a lot different from the novel.
The Catcher in the Rye is much maligned. Accused of being misogynist, homophobic, and other horrible things, it’s a book that many people have a very strong opinion about one way or another.
He details stories that float around the county, amongst the men working the fields, and also the stories that women trade while they sew around the dining room table and children play around their feet. Those stories mark time. They are shared county history.
Hiroshima follows the stories of six individuals who lived through the bomb — a clerk, a seamstress, a doctor, a minister, a surgeon, and a Catholic priest initially from Germany. There are five chapters each with six sections — one for each person.
Dyar is not a character you sympathize with, but he is a character that you can’t look away from. His questions about existence are common ones, it is where and how he seeks answers that compose his dissolution and downfall.
The original novel of The Lost Weekend is quite different from the film. The book is even more honest and ugly, portraying addiction as not only destructive for the addict but the entire world around them.
Plath’s lyrical prose made it obvious that her poetry would be just as lyrical, and she excels at using language and a sparsity of words to express powerful concepts and themes.
here are a lot of great and very notable essays in here — ‘What White Publishers Won’t Print’, ‘How It Feels to Be Colored Me’, and ‘I Saw Negro Votes Peddled’. However, when discussing Hurston’s work, it is only appropriate to note that she is not the easiest author to read.
Ellison’s use of language to create complex tapestries of themes and concepts is hard to put into words, both because his style is so unique and because his skill is so profound.
