Author Archives: Doug

This short novel is set in late 17th century Denmark. Narrated by a wax doll created by one of the characters, it concerns accused witches, their relationships to one another and their persecutions. I was struck by the novel’s oddity, both in tone and construction. And since I read an English translation from Danish, I credit both the author and the translator Martin Aitken for the striking use of language. I suspect the novel will more likely be enjoyed by … Continue reading →

Maggie O’Farrell is seductive and shameless. She teases out every plot point and twist; she catches your attention and then makes you read through paragraphs of fine—at times poetic—prose only to reach a resolution that leaves you eager for more. Hamnet is an invented history constructed around a few broken bricks and half-rotted historical facts, and is written to please. The characters come vividly to life: the mysterious Agnes, John, Mary, Bartholomew, Eliza, Susanna, Hamnet, Judith, and Agnes’s never-named husband … Continue reading →

STUDIES IN CLASSIC AMERICAN LITERATURE BY D.H. Lawrence In this work, first published in 1923, Lawrence comments on the following American writers: Ben Franklin, Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Richard Henry Dana, Herman Melville and Walt Whitman. And he pontificates from front to back. Probably the most famous sentence in the book: “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer.” Thus the book is more about Lawrence than it … Continue reading →

I read this novel in 1962 shortly after it got free of the censors and almost thirty years after it was first published in France. Now at 85 I have read it again. Readers who take it on should be prepared to tolerate frequent use of the C word, a few of the N word, occasional commentary that some might consider antisemitic, and a text containing more spiel than narrative. But there is humor, commentary on art, music and literature, … Continue reading →