Alexandra Fuller

I rarely read best-sellers. Why have the same media experience as a million other people?  I don't see the appeal. Despite that I agreed to read Cocktail Hour Under The Tree Of Forgetfulness by Alexandra "Bobo" Fuller. Overall it wasn't bad. But I'd rather have my nose in something a tad more obscure. But I did fine a single sentence I found worthy of inclusion here.

"It would at least be fair warning and an honest admission: even a good war—if there is such a thing—will kill anyone old enough to die."

 It sounds more like something Robert Stone would have written. In the context of the book it stands out as Gothic even within the a short few stark paragraphs about war. Her prose is conversational, her writing-style mostly concerned about coloring in the characters and story craft... not about language. It's that lego-brick, pointillist quality to language that I really like in good literature. I found a tiny pebble of a gem here but I'll take it.

The First Man On The Sun

Richard Henry Wilde Dillard writing as R. H. W. Dillard, is better known as a poet than a novelist and it shows in his prose. Born in 1937, Dillard is still alive, actually published What Is Owed the Dead, only in 2011. But of the dozen books he's written, only two are prose. This book, The First Man On The Sun was published in 1983.

His deep connection to verse is self-evident in his alternately clever and self-indulgent prose. Lines like "The dry hard land bursts all around into bloom; the bloom fades away."  Hemingway would have broken that into two sentences and called it good. But being that clever makes one want to be clever as well. Dense well used language is inspirational like that. But his indulgent prose has a similar appeal. If you ripped it out of the story it would double as verse:

"See and see and see. Trees blurred with a yellow green haze. Trees breaking into bud and bloom. Trees filling with wide green leaves. Trees swaying and snarling in the wind. Trees black and bleak in long steady rain. Trees ringing out with each new spring. Trees moving. Trees walking. Men and women walking, the way of man and of us all."

FOOD AND BOOKS

It's hard to say enough about a book store/restaurant. You get a free book with every entree and they give away about 100,000 books a year. You can see their sign from the side of I-91 in Connecticut. It reads simply "FOOD AND BOOKS." Two of the greatest things on earth in one place. More here, here and here.

Death of the Adversary

Hans Keilson is best known as a child psychologist. But he also wrote half a dozen books set in WWII which grippingly portray the era since he was there. His prose is usually minimalist. His books are primarily about story and not language.. but sometimes his metaphors are phenomenal.

"New antagonists will for ever arise and step into the arena, and piece after piece will crumble off our beautiful world, as though it were an ancient ruin, through whose decaying walls the wind and the rain will whistle. Every day another piece will crumble off, until nothing but a heap of stones marks the place where it once stood in better days. And we take part in the cruel game, under the illusion that we can bring it to a happy conclusion..."