Christopher O'Riley Just finished reading the massive and magnificent first volume of Madison Smartt Bell‘s trilogy of novels illuminating the Haitian Revolution, All Souls’ Rising. We who ignore history are doomed to repeat it: while essentially a narrative of the development from slave, Toussaint-Louverture, to General of the largest and most disciplined force of the uprising, of …
Haruki Murakami‘s latest is valedictory testament to and distillation of his prevalent themes (witness the brilliant graphic below) but withal the courage to make empathy itself the magic, rather than keenly imaginative quantum leaps of intuition or hyper/alternative-reality; evil is not a faceless nightmare figure, but the lies we tell our closest friends, ourselves; no …
I’ve enjoyed all the Anthony Neil Smith crime novels as I could put my hands to: Psychosomatic, The Drummer, the Billy Lafitte series–Yellow Medicine (my first experience of Mr. Smith’s work), Hogdoggin’; haven’t read the third in that series, The Baddest Ass. His latest work of Minnesota noir I’ve read is All the Young Warriors, …
Continuing my Summer of Bell, traversing the complete published works of Madison Smartt Bell, I just finished reading his novel, Save Me, Joe Lewis (last words of a deathrow inmate prior to his execution), which follows the criminal path of serial muggers Macrae (the lanky one, always recognizable as our author) and Charlie, with the …
This slim volume, part of Francesco Clemente‘s Hanuman Books series, little volumes like prayer books, is a gem of Patti Smith’s journal entries, poems, lyrics, and photographs. It is a rarified and luminous precis of her gem-like prose and meditation. My friend Jack Regan recommended it to me quite a while ago, and I finally …
I’ve read all the published work of Lucius Shepard, and now have, sadly, read the last of him; his novel, Beautiful Blood, came out just a few months after his passing. Beautiful Blood is the first novel-length excursion through Lucius’ mythology of the Dragon Griaule. First invoked in The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule …