http://www.themillions.com Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:14:32 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Brideshead Revisited is one of my favorite novels.  I am prone to the use of superlatives, fits of florid enthusiasm, and weeping, so I have dozens of favorite novels, songs, and movies.  I also have a lot of mortal enemies (mostly from the parking lot) and several best friends.  Both ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/03/modern-library-revue-80-brideshead-revisited.html I don't tend to condemn books solely because the writer was some variety of wretch.  But I have done so if I think it will create a smoke-screen for the fact that I did not understand the book.  For example, the poems of Ezra Pound mystify me, so I make ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/01/modern-library-revue-72-a-house-for-mr-biswas.html As it happens, I read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter right after finishing Out Stealing Horses.  I felt almost forced to read the latter novel (the locus of a great storm of positive feedback), but I left it feeling disappointed in myself and in literature for our respective failures to engage ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/12/modern-library-revue-17-the-heart-is-a-lonely-hunter.html I have seriously mixed feelings about this book.  First off, it is part of the group of post-war novels by/about American men who are peeved because getting old is boring and their wives aren't very sexy.  Please forgive my bawdy language, but let's call them the My Dick novels, with major sub-genres My ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/11/modern-library-revue-42-deliverance.html I think it's a symptom of the internet age, or my impending old age, or doom, that while I used to amble into a used book shop with no particular book in mind and leave satisfied with a bulging grocery bag, now I find myself a slave to a roster.  Before, ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/10/modern-library-revue-95-under-the-net.html I avoided reading Kim for a long time because I've always thought of it as some creaking colonial bore, popular with dads (or my dad, rather. Who is not, for the record, a creaking colonial bore).  Kipling, I have observed, is catnip to gentlemen over a certain age; how far they are ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/modern-library-revue-78-kim.html I think I was the last of my age peers to read Native Son; I feel like most of us read it in school. Either I never had it in a course, or I did, but it was during one of my bouts of absenteeism from class and scholastic ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/07/modern-library-revue-20-native-son_23.html To write this installment of Modern Revue, I located and reread the copy of To the Lighthouse I had in college. The shock that the novel delivered to my booze-sodden collegiate nervous system is demonstrable. My copy looks like a creature, bristling with orange post-its. Obscure marginal ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/07/modern-library-revue-15-to-lighthouse_15.html I have a slightly hard time with Graham Greene. I don't know why. I think his writing is very good. He has weighty themes and sexy titles. And yet I have found that I can't really remember anything about his novels beyond the most basic plot ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/06/modern-library-revue-40-heart-of-matter_19.html For no reason at all, I always thought this book was about horses and cavalry officers. (This is a good example of why, when you ask me a question and I answer, you should be careful to ascertain whether I know the answer, or if it's just a feeling ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/05/modern-library-revue-22-appointment-in_18.html