SVETLANA ALEXIEVICH – A BOLD CHOICE FOR THE NOBEL…OR IS IT? Nobel laureates Theodor Mommsen, Rudolph Eucken, Henri Bergson, Bertrand Russell, and Winston Churchill have spent many decades re...
THE GREAT HEDGE In trying to nail down the genesis of my interest in the Nobel Prize, the best I’ve been able to come up with is that that when I was four years old I fell down the stairs. It w...
https://thestockholmshelf.com/2015/10/the-2015-nobel-prize-for-literature-my-shortlist/
At some point during the writing of Beloved (1987) a daemon gave Toni Morrison the following line: “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom.” Only a pedant would see two sentences here. I...
Always the tradeoff: If I’m reading copiously, I have less time to write. In lieu of a proper post, here is a rundown on what I’ve been reading, and a teaser for the posts I hope it will prod...
https://thestockholmshelf.com/2015/02/to-read-or-to-write-an-update/
I. I try to imagine them meeting in Paris: the young Pär Lagerkvist and Gertrude Stein. He, a Swede of peasant stock, shock of blond hair, taciturn not even the word for his humming inwardness. ...
https://thestockholmshelf.com/2015/01/par-lagerkvists-irrevocable-divide/
The American composer and voluminous diarist, Ned Rorem, made the following entry in his Nantucket Diary, dated 17 October, 1985: “When it comes to prizes there is no right choice, although wit...
https://thestockholmshelf.com/2014/11/the-trolley-claude-simons-elegiac-artifice/
Almost as good as when those crazy Swedes choose to honor one of my cherished writers is when they choose to honor someone I’ve never heard of. Ignorance becomes a virtue, or nearly, just to ha...
WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE MEAN TO READ A few years ago I mentioned to a good friend of mine who is a writer that I have never read Midnight’s Children. He didn’t say anything, but it was the kind ...
https://thestockholmshelf.com/2014/09/the-2014-nobel-prize-for-literature-my-shortlist/
In repressive regimes everywhere – whether in what was the Soviet block, Latin America, Africa, China – most imprisoned writers have been shut away for their activities as citizens striving f...
Most important in all of life to honor what we’re drawn to. To honor the being drawn. Food, books, sex, a hermit’s life, whatever it might be, we can measure the shriveling of our spirits aga...
https://thestockholmshelf.com/2014/06/on-why-i-havent-posted-anything-for-two-months/