BOOKS – WRITING – HUMOR – ABSURD
Screw Quarter Day 13 /absurdist comedy/ I welcomed the first rays of sun with enthusiastic cheer. After a long trip – full of obstacles, spiritual slumber, and excessive heat – I felt like a bear, awake and moving in the direction of the dawning light. We arrived at the east riverbank of Gunung Kinabalu, closer to the lunch. Three cars, one of which was a beautiful Bentley R-Type Continental from...
Day 9 The Ark /absurdist comedy/ When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear. My ex-wife, Martha, took the definition of angry to another level. When she realized where she was, she started to swing the raft, madly kicking the wood floor. Three muscular Hamilton sisters pressed Martha’s body against the wet boards, but she did not give up. She slipped out from under their fingers, grabbed Mr. Brahman-Carrado’s suitcase,...
Whether you dance, draw, make music, shoot field goals, build houses, tune engines, or sit around all day watching television, you are an artist. Your single greatest work of art is your Self! As with any art form, the more you understand and develop your talents, the more empowered and masterful you become as an artist. This is particularly important when engaging in the art of consciously shaping your own...
I recently received a package of books (through the post), and I was instantly in awe at what delicately tumbled out – an old green cover with a picture of the boat with a red roof: A House-Boat on the Styx, written by John Kendrick Bangs. It was published in 1895 by Harper & Brothers. There’s also a stamp with the name there, perhaps from the library: Jean Ross Bennett,...
Today’s post is about Chaim Potok’s book, The Chosen, which I consider an excellent read as well as great studying material – for all of us: writers, booklovers, nerdy teenagers, religious folks, even conscious non-believers. I have to admit, I fell in love with this novel when I read an introduction by Shalom Auslander, where he said (the very first words before you open chapter 1): Dear God, I hated...
LET THIS NOVEL HAUNT YOU… 1. I’m so excited to get to talk to you about Guns of Perdition (Armageddon Showdown Series), Jessica! This is your debut novel, and it’s haunting, gorgeous, and dark. Congratulations! What can readers coming in fresh to your work expect from this book? Thanks so much for having me, Ray! I’m thrilled to be here. Guns of Perdition is a genre mashup of Western and Horror, commonly known...
In the introduction to the book Aspects of the Novel, the author E. M. Forster says that his subject is to analyze the literary works written in English. He asks himself: can he ignore the prose written in other languages? He states, “as unpleasant and unpatriotic it sounds, the truth has to be faced. No English novelist is as great as Tolstoy – he has given a complete picture of...
“When one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, “What does it mean?” It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable,” said Rene Magritte about his painting The Lovers. As you understand, we’ll talk about surrealism, but not about Rene Magritte in particular, although he was one of the most plagiarized artists, the true surrealist with witty and unexpected ideas. Today I’d...