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Author Archives: Doug
Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness
Alexandra Fuller has written three memoirs about herself and her family: Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness and Leaving Before the Rains Come. Cocktail Hour is the first I have read, though I have also enjoyed her novel, Quiet Until the Thaw. Cocktail Hour focuses on the author’s extraordinary mother Nicola Fuller, a white woman of Scottish heritage, who grew up in Africa and has lived most all of her life there. … Continue reading
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I LIKE BILL
I like Bill. Bill McKinley, that is, the guy who’s been hanging out in the Arcata Plaza since 1906. People who want him removed try to associate him with various crimes to which he is not connected. He should be removed, they tell us, because in the 1860s indigenous people were being sold in the Arcata Plaza. But in the 1860s young Bill was not selling slaves in Arcata. He was thousands of miles away, fighting to free slaves in … Continue reading
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Kim Thúy’s novel Mãn, a Review
Kim Thúy is a Vietnamese-born Canadian novelist who writes in French but whose work is available in English translation. The title of the novel, Mãn, is also the name of the story’s female narrator. The name means “perfect fulfillment” and one could interpret the novel as Mãn’s journey to achieve the potential promised by her name. On the opening page we learn that one woman gave her birth, a second found her in a vegetable patch and a third, Maman—”my … Continue reading
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SQUARE, the Screenplay
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MARTIN JOHN, a novel by Anakana Schofield
Anakana Schofield, a Canadian writer of Irish descent, makes strong demands on us. Her novel, MARTIN JOHN, is not particularly long. And its vocabulary is not difficult though it helps to have some familiarity with British English so when the word “torch” appears you realize it refers to a flashlight and not a flaming cloth wrapped around a stick, and that “tube” refers to the subway not the TV. Nor does Ms. Schofield trouble us with convoluted sentences or interminable … Continue reading
THE LANGUAGE GAP
Hagen tries to explain to me how he constructed the large graceful patio on the back of the Brandt family home in Bad Duebin near Leipzig. He is a joyous man, large, fleshy in a pleasing way, strong, capable, deep of voice, teeming with energy, a man with a hardy laugh and a ready sense of humor. A man who chooses beer over wine. (His preferred beer comes from the north of Germany near the Danish border. It has a … Continue reading
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