www.richardjespers.com
  • Home
  • Books
  • Journals
  • Blog

A Writer's Wit: Jane Green

5/31/2023

0 Comments

 
Whether you are inspired or not, the only way to unlock your creativity,  is to start writing.
​Jane Green
Author of ​Sister Stardust
​Born May 31, 1968
Picture
J. Green
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Christopher Lasch
FRI: My Book World | Nancy Loe, 
Hearst Castle: An Interpretive History of W. R. Hearst's San Simeon Estate
0 Comments

A Writer's Wit: ​Colm Tóibín

5/30/2023

0 Comments

 
Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.
​Colm Tóibín
Author of The Magician
Born May 30, 1955 
Picture
C. Tóibín
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Jane Green

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Christopher Lasch
FRI: My Book World | Nancy Loe, 
Hearst Castle: An Interpretive History of W. R. Hearst's San Simeon Estate
0 Comments

Angels Indeed

5/26/2023

0 Comments

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
It reminds me to say that staying local should never be about looking at the world through a closed window, but about making a home then throwing the doors open and inviting the world in.
​Simon Armitage, Poet
Author of ​Out of the Blue
​Born May 26, 1963
Picture
S. Armitage

My Book World

Picture
Johnson, Denis. Angels: A Novel. New York: HarperCollins, 2002 (1977).

I wouldn’t have thought of these words, but a blurb located on the back of the book describes the novel as being about two born losers. And I believe that is the case, unfortunately. A poor woman with two small children meets a divorced man, and they wind up in Phoenix. In the desert city, after mishaps with drugs, the woman finds herself in rehab, on the path toward a new life. The man and his two brothers, however, make a plan to rob a bank, believing their idea is brilliant. The heist, of course, goes awry, and the man winds up in prison killing someone. The account of his execution may be one of the most realistic and chilling scenes I’ve ever read in fiction. Angels makes a fine title on several levels of irony.

TUES: A Writer's Wit | Colm Tóibín
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Jane Green
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Christopher Lasch
FRI: My Book World | Nancy E. Loe, ​Hearst Castle: An Interpretive History

0 Comments

A Writer's Wit: Bennett Cerf

5/25/2023

0 Comments

 
Middle age is when your old classmates are so grey and wrinkled and bald they don’t recognize you.
​Bennett Cerf
Author of ​Bennett Cerf's Book of Laughs
​Born May 25, 1898
Picture
B. Cerf
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Denis Johnson, ​Angels

TUES: A Writer's Wit | Colm Tóibín
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Jane Green
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Christopher Lasch
0 Comments

A Writer's Wit: Elsa Maxwell

5/24/2023

0 Comments

 
I make enemies deliberately. They are the sauce piquante to my dish of life.
​Elsa Maxwell
Author of How to Do It or the Lively Art of Entertaining
​Born May 24, 1883
Picture
E. Maxwell
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Bennett Cerf
FRI: My Book World | Denis Johnson, ​Angels
0 Comments

Margaret Wise Brown

5/23/2023

0 Comments

 
In this modern world where activity is stressed almost to the point of mania, quietness as a childhood need is too often overlooked. Yet a child’s need for quietness is the same today as it has always been—it may even be greater—for quietness is an essential part of all awareness. In quiet times and sleepy times a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own.
​Margaret Wise Brown
Author of ​The Runaway Bunny
​Born May 23, 1910
Picture
M. W. Brown
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Elsa Maxwell

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Bennett Cert
FRI: My Book World | Denis Johnson, Angels
0 Comments

Gorman Carries Weight of World

5/19/2023

0 Comments

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
A man can do what is his duty; and when he says “I cannot,” he means, “I will not.”
​Johann Fichte
Author of 
Wissenschaftslehre (“Theory of Scientific Knowledge”)
​Born May 19, 1762
Picture
J. Fichte

My Book World

Picture
Gorman, Amanda. Call Us What We Carry: Poems. New York: Viking, 2021.

This collection of poetry may be the most innovative one I’ve ever read—quite fitting for one of our youngest and most distinguished poets. Gorman uses a wide variety of poetic forms. Concrete poetry portrays Melville’s whale, and a poem about the Covid Pandemic is a black mask with white print. She devises a series of free forms fitting the subject matter. Yet others are truly novel, for example, in “The Soldiers (or Plummer),” in which her lines representing a young soldier’s diary appear as dated diary pages. The poet seems to be telling the broad sweep of African-American history by searching out every appropriate form and by sweeping out every ignored corner of said history. One reading, as with most fine poetry, will not be enough. And I look forward to Gorman’s next collection.

TUES: A Writer's Wit | Margaret Wise Brown
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Elsa Maxwell
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Bennett Cerf
FRI: My Book World | Denis Johnson, ​Angels


0 Comments

A Writer's Wit: Diane Duane

5/18/2023

0 Comments

 
There is a rule for fantasy writers: The more truth you mix in with a lie, the stronger it gets.
​Diane Duane
Author of ​Deep Wizardry
​Born May 18, 1952
Picture
D. Duane
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Amanda Gorman, ​Call Us What We Carry

TUES: A Writer's Wit | Margaret Wise Brown
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Elsa Maxwell
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Bennett Cert
0 Comments

A Writer's Wit: Robert Surtees

5/17/2023

0 Comments

 
The only infallible rule we know is, that the man who is always talking about being a gentleman never is one.
​Robert Surtees
Author of ​The Horseman's Manual
Born May 17, 1803
Picture
R. Surtees
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Diane Duane
FRI: My Book World | Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry
0 Comments

A Writer's Wit: Jean Hanff Korelitz

5/16/2023

0 Comments

 
As a writer, I have this compulsion to take characters who appear formidable and bombard them with adversity until they crumble. What's interesting is watching them rise again, and seeing how they've changed and grown, if indeed they have.
​Jean Hanff Korelitz
Author of ​The Latecomer
​Born May 16, 1961
Picture
J. H. Korelitz
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Robert Surtees

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Diane Duane
FRI: My Book World | Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry
0 Comments

Irving's Last Book?

5/12/2023

0 Comments

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
I was much distressed by next door people who had twin babies and played the violin; but one of the twins died, and the other has eaten the fiddle, so all is peace.
​Edward Lear, English Poet Known for His Limericks
Author of "There Was an Old Lady Whose Folly"
​
​Born May 12, 1812
Picture
E. Lear

My Book World

Picture
Irving, John. The Last Chairlift: A Novel. New York: Simon, 2022.

I’m a big fan of most of Irving’s early and mid-career books, including his nonfiction. I loved reading Garp, Hotel New Hampshire, and A Prayer for Owen Meany. I had to begin the latter three times until it finally ensnared me and I couldn’t put it down. Perusing The Last Chairlift, sadly, is not like that.
 
I read this book aloud to my partner evenings over a period of three months. I kept waiting for Irving’s Dickensian afterburner to kick in at about page 100, that thrust that would propel us to the end. It did not engage, not for me anyway. Almost nine hundred pages seems too long for a contemporary novel, I believe. It might have been better served to come in at four or even five hundred pages. Why?
 
For one thing, there is too much of a certain kind of repetition. Normally, I like some recapitulation, little wrap-ups of or references to earlier events to remind readers what has come before. However, in this novel, Irving has an annoying habit of attaching endearing monikers like the little snowshoer to characters instead of using the character’s name (and his practice seems clunky compared to the Russians who do this rather well). Of course, he alternates their usage with their real name at times, but by the time he does, one forgets who the little snowshoer is . . . or was.
 
And did someone say ghosts? A few of the characters die along the way (the novel does cover quite a life span), but do they? They keep reappearing as ghosts, but Irving doesn’t have much of a mechanism for readers to grab onto. We’re just supposed to know it. Rather than being led to believe this is some kind of flashback, it is really encounters with ghosts we’re having. I will accept responsibility for sloppy reading, but I’m not sure it’s all my fault. Or are ghosts merely an easy, perhaps sloppy, representation of how the main character misses the people in his life who die?
 
Finally, Irving has a careerlong fascination with a number of images or motifs: bears or people in bear costumes, an almost homoerotic fascination with wrestling, and also, among others, a perhaps erotic fascination with trans people (and a son who accepts his trans mother, see The World According to Garp). This novel is populated with trans people, yet I never get the sense that Irving has a real feel or understanding of them. There is not enough information present on the page for readers to believe he knows what he’s talking about: complex physical and psychological transformations, surgical or other medical procedures, the emotional angst that must come with such metamorphoses. And always, I wonder why he avoids other LGBTIQA+ iterations, mostly the G one (except for a lesbian couple who must be the last vestige of vaudeville, appearing nightly in Two Dykes, One Who Talks, har har har). Just saying.
 
It seems that Irving may have wished for this book to be his swan song, and he puts his entire heart and snippets of every motif from his entire oeuvre and mixes them all into a fine pea soup with not a little ham. I don’t know about others, but as I finished this go-around with the latest Irving novel, I could only stomach so much of this rich pea soup. And only so much ham.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Jean Hanff Korelitz

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Robert Surtees
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Diane Duane
FRI: My Book World | Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry: Poems

0 Comments

A Writer's Wit: Benjamin Dreyer

5/11/2023

0 Comments

 
I am a copy editor. After a piece of writing has been, likely through numerous drafts, developed and revised by the writer and by the person I tend to call the editor editor and deemed essentially finished and complete, my job is to lay my hands on that piece of writing and make it . . . better. Cleaner. Clearer. More efficient. 
​Benjamin Dreyer
Author of Dreyer's English: 
An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style
​Born May 11, 1958
Picture
B. Dreyer
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | John Irving, ​The Last Chairlift

TUES: A Writer's Wit | Jean Hanff Korelitz
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Robert Surtees
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Diane Duane
0 Comments

A Writer's Wit: Ariel Durant

5/10/2023

0 Comments

 
It is good a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity.
​Ariel Durant
Author of ​The Lessons of History
Born May 10, 1898
Picture
A. Durant
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Benjamin Dreyer
FRI: My Book World | John Irving, ​The Last Chairlift
0 Comments

A Writer's Wit: Sophie Scholl

5/9/2023

0 Comments

 
Just because so many things are in conflict does not mean that we ourselves should be divided.
​Sophie Scholl, anti-Nazi activist
Subject of Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005 film)
​Born May 9, 1921
Picture
S. Scholl
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Ariel Durant

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Benjamin Dreyer
FRI: My Book World | John Irving, The Last Chairlift
0 Comments

Less, More Lost Than Ever

5/5/2023

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
On an exhausted field, only weeds grow.
​Henryk Sienkiewicz
Author of ​Quo Vadis
​Born May 5, 1846
Picture
H. Sienkiewicz

My Book World

Picture
Greer, Andrew Sean. Less Is Lost. New York: Little, 2022.

My only criticism of Greer’s first novel in this series, Less, was that readers had to play a guessing game as to whom the narrator was. I felt there were some problems with that mechanism (see my complete profile). Why not just write the narrative in third person? I asked at the time. Less’s lover, Freddy Pelu, could not possible know some of the things Less had experienced. At least, that is what I reasoned.
 
In this novel, Freddy Pelu is an openly open gay narrator, Less’s partner (the one he finally winds up with in the first novel). And yet, his similar narration of this novel sets up different but similarly disturbing questions: 1) Since the two men are once again separated, we don’t see them together. Less is on an extended book tour, attempting to scare up extra money, Freddy off somewhere else. 2) Again, Freddy seems to be narrating Less’s story about the death of Less’s previous lover. Is he actually there to witness all of Less’s torments? 3) Why even have a partner if Less is not even going to engage with him, the least of which would be coitus?
 
Still, as a summer beach read, Greer’s mixture of apt literary allusions and familiarity with pop culture, the novel is not disappointing. It kept me reading right to the very end when Less, after crisscrossing the USA—combining literary lectures with personal journey—finally meets up with Freddy (although it is only a good guess on the part of readers). If Greer squeaks out a sequel, I do hope that, even if Freddy narrates this one, too, that readers will experience the partners being in the same room!

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Sophie Scholl

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Ariel Durant
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Benjamin Dreyer
FRI: My Book World | John Irving, The Last Chairlift

A Writer's Wit: Anna Olson

5/4/2023

0 Comments

 
Baking may be regarded as a science, but it's the chemistry between the ingredients and the cook that gives desserts life. Baking is done out of love, to share with family and friends, to see them smile.
​Anna Olson
Author of ​Set for the Holidays
​Born May 4, 1968
Picture
A. Olson
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Andrew Sean Greer, ​Less Is Lost

TUES: A Writer's Wit | Sophie Scholl
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Ariel Durant
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Benjamin Dreyer
0 Comments

A Writer's Wit: Reza Aslan

5/3/2023

0 Comments

 
Religion doesn’t make people bigots. People are bigots and they use religion to justify their ideology.
Reza Aslan
Author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
Born May 2, 1972
Picture
R. Aslan
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anna Olson
FRI: My Book World | Andrew Sean Greer, Less Is Lost
0 Comments

A Writer's Wit: Margaret Hill McCarter

5/2/2023

0 Comments

 
Joy does not kill any more than sorrow. 
Margaret Hill McCarter
Author of 
A Master’s Degree
Born May 2, 1860
Picture
M. Hill McCarter
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Reza Aslan

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anna Olson
FRI: My Book World | Andrew Sean Greer, Less Is Lost
0 Comments
    AUTHOR
    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

    See my profile at Author Central:
    http://amazon.com/author/rjespers


    Richard Jespers's books on Goodreads
    My Long-Playing Records My Long-Playing Records
    ratings: 1 (avg rating 5.00)


    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011



    Categories

    All
    Acting
    Actors
    African American History
    Aging
    Alabama
    Alaska
    Aldo Leopold
    Andy Warhol
    Arizona
    Arkansas
    Art
    Atrial Fibrillation
    Authors
    Authors' Words
    Barcelona
    Biography
    Blogging About Books
    Blogs
    Books
    California
    Cancer
    Cars
    Catalonia
    Colorado
    Cooking
    Creative Nonfiction
    Culinary Arts
    Deleting Facebook
    Ecology
    Education
    Environment
    Epigraphs
    Essays
    Feminism
    Fiction
    Fifty States
    Film
    Florida
    Georgia
    Grammar
    Greece
    Gun Violence
    Hawaii
    Heart Health
    Historic Postcards
    History
    Humor
    Idaho
    Iowa
    Journalism
    LGBTQ
    Libraries
    Literary Biography
    Literary Journals
    Literary Topics
    Literature
    Maine
    Massachusetts
    Memoir
    Michigan
    Minnesota
    Mississippi
    M K Rawlings
    Musicians
    Nevada
    New Hampshire
    New Mexico
    New Yorker Stories
    Nonfiction
    North Carolina
    Novelist
    Ohio
    Pam Houston
    Parker Posey
    Photography
    Playwrights
    Poetry
    Politics
    Psychology
    Publishing
    Quotations
    Race
    Reading
    Recipes
    Seattle
    Short Story
    South Carolina
    Spain
    Susan Faludi
    Teaching
    Tennessee
    Texas
    Theater
    The Novel
    Travel
    Travel Photographs
    True Crime
    #TuesdayThoughts
    TV
    U.S.
    Vermont
    Voting
    War
    Washington
    Wisconsin
    World War II
    Writer's Wit
    Writing


    RSS Feed

    Blogroll

    alicefrench.wordpress.com
    kendixonartblog.com
    Valyakomkova.blogspot.com

    Websites

    Caprock Writers' Alliance
    kendixonart.com

    tedkincaid.com
    www.trackingwonder.com
    www.skans.edu
    www.ttu.edu
    www.newpages.com
    www.marianszczepanski.com
    William Campbell Contemporary Art, Inc.
    Barbara Brannon.com
    Artsy.net
WWW.RICHARDJESPERS.COM  ©2011-2025
                    BOOKS  PHOTOS  PODCASTS  JOURNALS  BLOG