Category Archives: Literature

An implausible anecdote about Marcel Proust

Posted on September 9, 2021 by odeboyz

“…Proust himself had said that he wrote the opening and closing paragraphs of À la recherche one after the other, and then just filled in the other 1.2 million words in the middle.” Salmon, Peter. An Event, Perhaps (p. 110). … Continue reading →

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Mark Twain on Stupidity

Posted on September 6, 2021 by odeboyz
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Women Always Win

Posted on September 6, 2021 by odeboyz

“While men were watching professional football or drinking beer or bowling, they, the women, were thinking about us, concentrating, studying, deciding whether to accept us, discard us, exchange us, kill us or whether simply to leave us. In the end … Continue reading →

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P G Wodehouse on Depression

Posted on August 23, 2021 by odeboyz

“Ginger’s depression deepened. A dinner with Uncle Donald would have hardly been a cheerful function, even in the surroundings of a banquet in the Arabian Nights. There was that about Uncle Donald’s personality which would have cast a sobering influence … Continue reading →

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Tony Hancock* is reading

Posted on August 19, 2021 by odeboyz

Hancock: Do you mind? I’m trying to read, don’t interrupt! I’m on the edge of me seat here. Sid James: Good, is it? Hancock: Good? This is red hot, this is, mate. I’d hate to think of a book like … Continue reading →

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Victor Hugo on Sewage

Posted on August 2, 2021 by odeboyz

Violating every rule of narrative, Hugo interrupts the climax of his great novel Les Misérables (1862) to hector the reader for fifteen pages about the Parisian sewer system. The city’s sewers discharged vast quantities of excrement into rivers, which carried … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Curtis Sittenfeld ~ American Wife (2008)

Posted on July 22, 2021 by odeboyz

This book is 635 pages long and a long read. Is it worth it? Unfortunately as I began this review I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t. This makes me feel stupid. The book isn’t a novel it’s a … Continue reading →

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Bob Dylan in 1965

Posted on July 19, 2021 by odeboyz

Dylan won an Oscar in 2001 for the song ‘Things Have Changed’ The YouTube film is here “Things Have Changed” Wins Original Song: 2001 Oscars – Bing video He also won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. His speech … Continue reading →

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The lunatics are in charge

Posted on July 1, 2021 by odeboyz
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Book Review: Jo Nesbo ~ Nemesis (2002) (Translator: Dan Bartlett)

Posted on June 17, 2021 by odeboyz

The job description of fictional Detective Inspectors is that they should be alcoholics, mavericks, insightful, very persuasive, and yet, curiously, trusting. They get into scrapes where everything says, ‘Don’t do it’. But they do. They lure colleagues into committing crimes … Continue reading →

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