Two decades ago I devoured Stephen Greenblatt’s phenomenal Shakespeare biography Will in the World and I decided to pull this book from the shelf again. The first surprise was the author’s signature in the book. Suddenly I remembered I had attended his lecture at the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam. In the meantime I read […]
literature
Salman Rushdie’s vital narrative voice
Salman Rushdie (1947), who quite often makes the news for the wrong reasons, surprises his readers with a powerful, sensuously written and at times witty novel. Victory City is structured as a historical epic retold by a humble writer. The setting is the Vijayanagara Empire in South India, which went through a period of prosperity […]
Outrageously hedonistic parties around heated outdoor pools
Fans of Bret Easton Ellis (1964) had to wait thirteen years for his latest novel The Shards. After a powerful beginning, the penultimate novels by the American author collapsed after a few chapters, so expectations were not that high anymore. Like in his debut Less Than Zero, Ellis returns in The Shards to his high […]
Marcel Proust’s eternal present
One hundred years after Marcel Proust’s death (18 November 1922), À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) is one of the best-known literary works. As a genre, Proust’s life’s work can hardly be classified. It is an autobiography, a psychological novel, a series of philosophical essays and a comedy of manners […]
100 years The Waste Land
100 years ago (15 October 1922) T.S. Eliot published his poem The Waste Land. Suddenly, everything written before that day seemed old-fashioned. The versatile, talented, original and self-willed poet, (drama) writer, critic and publisher was born in Saint Louis, Missouri (US). In 1914, he received a scholarship to study at Oxford. There, Eliot felt so […]
Where is Truman Capote’s safe?
Thirty-eight years after his death author Truman Capote (1924 – 1984) continues to fascinate. The documentary The Capote Tapes by Eb Burnough looks back on the life and work of this extraordinary American writer. His collection of short stories Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) and his novella Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1958) attracted much attention. The […]