The late Terry Pratchett wrote the Foreword to the 16th Edition of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. He said, It was my introduction to mythology and ancient history and a lot more, too, because Brewer’s is a serendipitous (see page 1063) book. In other words, you might not find what you are looking for, but…
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a/k/a Mark Twain, had a huge influence on WC as a young man. In particular his later works, stuff like The Mysterious Stranger, “The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg,” Letters from Earth and A Pen Warmed Up in Hell have an obvious impact on WC’s writing even today. Twain’s critical essay on James Fenimore Cooper, “Cooper’s Literary…
Idaho Governor Brad “Do” Little has put the State of Idaho into collective quarantine. We are to stay in our homes, for the most part, for the next 21 days. For those of WC’s friends who are similarly locked down, WC will be offering tips for coping. Here’s the first: If you enjoy reading books,…
It’s been aeons since WC did a genuine book review. After all, it says “Reviews” on the masthead. So WC will review four books here. WC’s writing teachers – you may be surprised that WC had had writing teachers – taught him not to use “that that” and “had had.” Even if Abrahahm Lincoln, in…
John McPhee is, by a wide margin, WC’s favorite non-fiction writer. McPhee’s last book, The Patch, and his recent essay in the New Yorker are both collections of fragments, work he started and never finished, ideas he played with and could never turn into a compete work, ideas that he never got around to. The fragments are fascinating…
In undergraduate school, WC was for a time fascinated – infatuated, really – with the works of Franz Kafka. It doesn’t take long to read all of Kafka’s works – five fairly short novels and a couple of short story collections – but they leave an impression, and appealed to WC’s sensibilities at the time.…
John MacPhee is WC’s favorite non-fiction writer, as WC has likely said too often in this blog. He’s 88 years old now, with some 36 books published (all of them still in print). WC owns all of them. They overfill a shelf. The Patch, his latest, is something of an experiment. The first third, titled…
