Starting Any Day Now: "That Time Faulkner Rejected the Aristotelian Unities of the Poetics: If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem"--A non-Yoknapatawpha novel that often lands among his top five on critical lists, If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem is two separate stories with different characters and no unity of place or time told in alternating parts. Yet … Continue reading Preview of Coming Attractions
Two by German writer W.G. Sebald , The Emigrants and Austerlitz, in connection with another project. I'm taking advantage of the newly released Sebald biography, Speak, Silence (Is that a great title or what?) by Carole Angier to try and make some determination of where Sebald's work, called a "new genre" between fiction and nonfiction, … Continue reading Currently Reading 11/17/2021
To keep up with the world of books and publishing, like Life and Literature's Facebook page. An example of my Facebook content from this week: Arts & Culture takes a close look at the Booker Prize shortlist. From NPR: Penguin Random House stopped from purchasing Simon & Schuster. Merger would turn Big 5 into Big … Continue reading Life & Lit Facebook Page
Every Friday afternoon one of my class periods at Hammond High School in Alexandria, Virginia in the late 1960's was led single file into the school library for an hour to check out books for book reports or papers or pleasure. Hammond High is most known today as the school that merged into T.C. Williams. … Continue reading The Saturday Review of Literature
by William Spell Jr. You, curiously curled beneath the dirt I scratched, silent and still, never to flirtAround my ankles in that sidewise walk,Those figure eights beneath my skirt. What great negation sneaked from out the bright?Crouched, waited for the right, oh just the rightTime within time to begin its sly stalk,Pounced, sharp, cold as a … Continue reading Felix Requiem
Big Bang By William Spell Jr We are made of the same stuff, You and I. Not of common stardust as all are, As all things are, As bark, fur, the air Surrounding Earth, As the insides of things, As agate, newborn seeds, beating hearts. If a universe is born in a big bang and … Continue reading Big Bang
I sometimes prefer the company of women. Actually I often prefer the company of women. So it happens that all my current reading is from female writers. Jane Alison is my new favorite writer. I discovered Meander, Spiral, Explode two years ago right before it was published while researching new formalist literary criticism. After publishing … Continue reading Currently Reading 8/9/21
by William Spell Jr. "Form and function are a unity, two sides of one coin. In order to enhance function, appropriate form must exist or be created."--Ida Pauline Rolf The history of literary theory consists of formalism and something that is not formalism in alternating cycles-circles-for throughout history. Now formalism swings around in the timeline … Continue reading The New Aesthetics: New Formalist Literary Theory
by William Spell Jr. Love and your iris inspired me to rise Above the entablature of your face, Into a realm of eternal pink skies On immortal wings of Beauty and Grace. O'er pedestals, statues, and temples Greek, Borne pure, without lust or depravity, Soared I. Soul's bareness is what I did seek; Your gaze … Continue reading Gazing at Aphrodite
by William Spell Jr. Love filled me up, and overflowed, Then spilled right out of me. From where it poured, a new love showed, And swelled, then, too, streamed free. In its devotion does prevail Divine cupidity: To dam, to shore, to steer, to sail Love's warm fluidity. No moored or anchored berth I find; … Continue reading Love Overflowed
A new candidate for prevailing literary theory has emerged during the last fifteen or twenty years. A popular work published in March of 2019 has pushed that literary theory further out into the reading public and teaching professions. Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode, proposes a return to form as a vehicle for creating fiction. Not … Continue reading New Formalism 1: The Pendulum Swings
"City Skyline", my composite photograph of the Jackson, Mississippi skyline, is on display at the Arts Center in downtown Jackson. Submitted in the Sky Through My Eye photo contest, "City Skyline" hangs alongside other entrants through the end of February. Composed of three sections, "City Skyline" contains elements from buildings impossible to see from a … Continue reading “City Skyline” at the Arts Center
In the publishing industry, and among the reading public, bestseller lists are the movie equivalent of box office receipts. One major difference, other than the type of media, is that with box office receipts, anyone can pretty much see the numbers, but with bestseller lists, the actual numbers of books sold (and revenues earned) is … Continue reading A Guide to Book Bestseller Lists
Life and Literature 