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Post by htmb on Mar 5, 2016 13:53:30 GMT
My favorite has always been Beach Music, which was semi-autobiographical. The complexities of the people and relationships he wrote about, based on his family members, were quite familiar to me from my own upbringing.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 20, 2016 20:42:14 GMT
Oh dear, I just found out that Anita Brookner died on March 15. Reading my first Anita Brookner novel (which I think was Hotel du Lac) was one of those high points that come in a lifetime of reading -- the thrill of finding something sterling and unique. Someone whom I'd urged to read Brookner sought me out later to effusively thank me for the suggestion -- that's how she affects readers. www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/15/anita-brookner-obituary
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2016 13:13:16 GMT
I was a fan as well. I loved Hotel Du Lac!!!
I devoured her novels.
RIP
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Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2016 18:05:57 GMT
So, Jim Harrison is gone. People generally loved him or hated him because he was a Hemingway style macho writer (although he hated Hemingway's work). He was a friend of writers like Raymond Carver and Richard Brautigan but he became famous for his works about open spaces such as Legends of the Fall. The French pretty much adored him, Americans a bit less since he referred to his country as a "fascist Disneyland."
He died of a simple heart attack at his home near Missoula.
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Post by htmb on Mar 27, 2016 18:20:43 GMT
I read an interview in one of the newspapers just last week.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2016 18:34:34 GMT
Very sad news. I read just about everything I could find of his. Although as Kerouac mentioned he was considered "a man's writer", I never felt that way about him. I remember him being quoted as saying he liked writing about semi-outcasts. He was also a prolific poet.
He died in Patagonia, Arizona, Age 78
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Post by htmb on Mar 27, 2016 18:44:16 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2016 18:44:54 GMT
Yes, I was just coming back to correct that: dead in Arizona, not Montana.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2016 18:52:32 GMT
Here's a lovely poem he wrote in 1970:
Before I was born I was water I thought of this sitting on a blue chair surrounded by pink, red, white hollyhocks In the yard in front of my green studio. There are conclusions to be drawn but I can't do it any more. Born man, child man, singing man dancing man, loving man, old man dying man. This is a round river and we are her fish who become water.
Jim Harrison 1970
RIP
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 27, 2016 19:03:37 GMT
Oh, thank you so much for that!
I really feel like crying, as I absolutely ADORE Jim Harrison. He is one of those writers who make you feel both astounded and enriched every time you read him. For those who only associate him with the movie Legends of the Fall, I urge you to read his book of that name -- lyrical, imaginative, inspired, perfect. Well, so many of his books -- Dalva, Julip, and others -- merit the same adjectives.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2016 3:42:38 GMT
I am feeling inclined to reread The Woman Lit By Fireflies.
One of my favorite works of his.
I also want to read his latest novella which curiously enough I had just read a review of last week.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2016 16:08:30 GMT
I just heard that playwright Edward Albee passed away at age 88. A true national treasure. I don't think there is a play of his I did not like.
RIP
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 22, 2016 3:27:26 GMT
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Post by lagatta on Dec 14, 2016 14:49:19 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 27, 2016 18:52:33 GMT
Boy, 2016 doesn't plan to stop until the bitter end. Richard Adams, author of Watership Down, has died. I was surprised that the obit calls Watership Down a children's book. It's not. www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-38446309
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 28, 2016 18:19:21 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 25, 2017 3:33:49 GMT
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Post by bjd on Apr 25, 2017 6:42:01 GMT
That was definitely one of those overrated books popular in the 1970s. I tried reading it at the time but gave up before the end.
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Post by Kimby on Apr 25, 2017 11:51:54 GMT
Here's a lovely poem he wrote in 1970: Before I was born I was water I thought of this sitting on a blue chair surrounded by pink, red, white hollyhocks In the yard in front of my green studio. There are conclusions to be drawn but I can't do it any more. Born man, child man, singing man dancing man, loving man, old man dying man. This is a round river and we are her fish who become water. Jim Harrison 1970 RIP (Sorry to thread jack, but I just read this poem and noted the references to other authors I love: "Before I was born, I was water" harkens to memories of the opening lines of (another Missoula author) Norman McLean's A River Runs Through It. And the "Round River" is also referenced in the essays of the great naturalist Aldo Leopold. Unconscious or deliberate borrowing? (I need to read some Harrison one day...)
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 25, 2017 16:44:12 GMT
Kimby, Jim Harrison is WONDERFUL. And that is a lovely, lovely poem.
I DID read Zen & the Art etc. back when it was popular & remember loving it.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 28, 2017 13:07:54 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 24, 2017 18:35:24 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 29, 2017 22:27:40 GMT
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Post by questa on Dec 30, 2017 7:21:35 GMT
Watership Down...I howled like a banshee at certain parts of this book...definitely not for children. I still can not bear to hear the song "Bright Eyes". I just have tears roll down my face.
Zen etc a very hard read but it comes together. Lots of wisdom and use of things we are familiar with to understand things that are new and complex.
Sue Grafton. created a clever and funny female investigator who followed the alphabet.
RIP all of you.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 12, 2018 4:48:47 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jan 12, 2018 14:22:39 GMT
I have to say, ashamedly, that I was totally unfamiliar with most of the writers on this list.
I was more than miffed that Sam Shepard only received about 2 or 3 lines whereas someone like Jimmy Breslin (a journalist for the New York Daily News) received several paragraphs as did other writers.
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Post by lagatta on Jan 13, 2018 20:49:26 GMT
Casimira, that is because the media (press, or electronic) likes to write about itself.
By the way, of course I know tha "media" is plural, but it is often used nowadays as a kind of mass or uncount noun.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 13, 2018 21:00:36 GMT
I suspect you are right Lagatta.
"Tis funny though because I was in NYC at the time "Son of Sam" was writing letters to Jimmy Breslin at the Daily News. We all waited for news with baited breath. At that time there was a morning AND an evening edition of both The Post and The Daily News. Maybe the Herald Tribune as well, I'm not sure.
And now to see this journalists name listed among literary giants seems so ironic and yes,a dismaying indicator of the current culture.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 13, 2018 21:58:34 GMT
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