Joyce Carol Oates on her collection

Joyce Carol Oates on Sourland

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reprint Time--Helena

A comment from the blogkeeper at Underbelly (thank you Buce) inspired me to look this up.  I was fairly certain that I had reviewed the book in the recent past, and so I discovered this.  a good book is worth appreciation--over and over and over again. Also, while you are appreciating, you might want to take in Underbelly's look at Helena as well.    La Belle Hélène on March 18, 2005 8:11 AM In reading Helena last night I stumbled across a large number of passages I would like to share. But I thought the more important thing to share was an observation. Evelyn Waugh liked this best among his books. There are a good many reasons why this might be so: it is splendidly written--both the prose and the coherence are several notches above some of his earlier, more frenetic work. It is tightly done, with just the right strokes and exactly the right selection of detail. But I suspect the reason Waugh prized this above all the other works is that in t...
Read more

E.F. Benson

With M. R. James, amongst the finest ghost stories in the language--a review of E. F. Benson's collected short stories . Memorable, "How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery," "The Room in the Tower," and "Mrs. Amworth."  While I don't agree with the blogger in Benson's wider range (M. R. James has quite a range from "Casting the Runes" to "Count Magnus" to "'Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad,"  and Lovecraft also had a large range from "Cool Air" to "Whisperer in the Darkness" to "Color Out of Space" not to mention the central position of the Mythos.  But that said, I cannot argue with the reviewer's admiration of the quality and range of Mr. Benson's wonderful collection.  Well worth one's time if one is into October Reading.  And what is particularly nice is that Benson does offer us, occasionally, the real and true, dyed-in-the-wool ghost story--a rarity...
Read more