My Name Is Aram
William Saroyan 1940 (An open and curious boy growing up in an Armenian community in California encounters the rich quirkiness of his family and neighbors.) Writing from the spirit of memory. Not a record of specific memories, but effortless intuitive writing that naturally conjures the ethos, tinged with wistfulness, that can accompany the distant remembrance […]
The Oregon Trail
Francis Parkman 1848 (Horses, rifles, and knives see a party of adventurers through the land of expansive plains, craggy mountains, buffalo, and the Sioux.) “Shaw! Buddy!” Imagine a young, spontaneous Yankee calling out to his friend, both of them just out of college. He proposes that they leave the effeminate comforts of the East, and […]
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852 (Two slaves struggle mightily: one for her liberty, the other for his integrity.) This novel, the best selling book in the nineteenth century besides the Bible, is a remarkably forceful argument against the world’s most blatant form of widespread institutionalized violation of human rights. It is a collage of slave lives and […]
Breakfast of Champions
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 1973 (Little do a frustrated writer and a troubled car dealer realize, that their impolite author is using their journey to meet each other as an excuse to mastermind a deconstruction of modern values!) Sort of The Temptation of St. Anthony, sort of by Rabo Karabekian, 1950. Sort of Sateen Dura-Luxe acrylic […]
Twain’s stories
February 9, 2015 / Leave a comment
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) 1865-1890 (A champion of common sense and nonsense casually delivers his colorful yarns, witty satires, and twisty dramas.) Sitting with Mark Twain when he’s in a storytelling mood, we get to know the man—or at least he leads us to believe we get to know him. He lets us in on […]
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