Yesterday I finally purchased Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) from iTunes movies. I had seen the movie three or four times before, and it has proven to be enjoyable everytime. Since every year or two, I suffer the desire to see it again, I decided that I needed to own it. The price was...
I’m a creature of habit. I suppose most people are in varying degrees, but I believe most people allow more randomness or spontaneity in their actions than I allow in mine. I have learned that my habits control my behavior almost every minute of the day. I have a routine even if I don’t...
Since war has played a significant role in shaping human society, war novels play a significant role in world literature. The first literature of the western world, the Homeric epic poem The Iliad, narrates an episode in the Trojan War. It focuses on the plight of one Greek soldier, Achilles, who feels his honor...
I became an atheist at the Cathedral of Avila in Spain. Standing in the cathedral, staring at the gilded alter, I overheard one of my travel companions say: “Just think. While this was being built, millions of Europeans were starving to death.” It was a simple comment, not directed at me, but it inspired...
“Who’s your favorite writer?” people sometimes ask me. “What’s your favorite novel?” I shy away from answering. I distrust absolutisms, and favorite implies an absolute status. But some writers I keep coming back to–Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Styron, etc.–and Thomas Hardy is one of these writers. Since I do not read English writers often, perhaps it’s...
Lest anyone believe I was naive, when I went to The Legend of Hercules, I wasn't expecting a great movie. I doubt that I was expecting a good movie. From the trailers I saw, I could tell that Renny Harlin suffered from mixed ideas about how to film this legendary story. Should a...
Jack Duluoz, Jack Kerouac's fictional alter-ego in Big Sur, felt the need to get away from it all for a few weeks of solitude. A successful writer, whose book The Road had inspired the Beaknik movement, Jack found himself hounded by fans who both misunderstand his writing and envision him to be the persona...
My writing has always been mobile. Long before the iPad and the iPhone, long before the laptop computer, even long before the household computer became commonplace, I carried a backpack filled with books, dictionaries, a dozen pencils and pins, my personal journal, and at least one pad of paper. I wrote on the go....
Every writer, I suppose, suffers writer’s block at some point of his career, but I have been suffering it for at least two years, probably longer. I learned writer’s block can take several forms, involve several symptoms, and become a personal habit. Sometimes writer’s block is realizing, thirty-thousand words into a novel, that it’s...
Jake Barnes likes to watch! Or perhaps he doesn't like it as much he finds it is his role in life. Whether watching world affairs as a newsman, enjoying a good bullfight, or witnessing the drama played out by his friends as they contend for the affections of the wayward Lady Ashley—Jake finds himself...
