Elmore Leonard was in his early 30s and still learning his craft when, in 1956, he published The Escape from Five Shadows. Missing is the snappy dialogue that he became known for. Missing, too, are the sharply drawn characters, both...
The 29-year-old Elmore Leonard had been a professional writer for just three years when, in 1954, he published his second novel The Law at Randado. It’s a book that displays some of the awkwardness one would expect from a new writer. But what...
I just finished one of those challenges on Facebook, this one wanting me on consecutive days to post an image of an album that influenced my musical taste, without comment. Here, in alphabetical order, is the full list, with a tiny comment...
Xavier X. Salomon ends his short, beautifully produced, extravagantly illustrated 2016 book The Art of Guido Cagnacci by quoting two words from a letter that two Italian luminaries exchanged nearly a century after the artist’s death. Cagnacci...
On the surface, Salman Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses is about two highly controversial verses that may or may not have been in Qur’an. Certainly, that’s what got Rushdie in trouble at the time with Ayatollah Ruhollah...
The scribbled telegram text, sent by messenger from the top of Mount Everest, was bleak — but also a bit odd. Snow conditions bad stop advanced base abandoned yesterday stop awaiting improvement All well News of failure was not unexpected from...
Lamentation By Patrick T. Reardon Let Israel now say, let Aaron now say, give thanks, mercy endures, mystery forever his majesty. Bulleted chaste gazelle, backyard cement, clot-blood hosed onto yellow winter grass...
When you’re looking for a good novel about Chicago, you’re most likely to turn to those writers identified as Chicago writers, such as Saul Bellow (The Adventures of Augie March) and Sara Paretsky (Indemnity Only) and Richard Wright (Native Son)...
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