st.donoghue

Remember: You don't have ADHD, you're not on any kind of spectrum, you don't suffer from any food allergies, and you're not experiencing "decision fatigue."

Found today in a book. We are not amused!

Den of Spies by Craig Unger — Open Letters Review A new history of the negotiations that put Ronald Reagan in power

My latest review for Open Letters ⬇️

“On the stylistic front, Unger’s prose is unobtrusive, direct and delightfully prosecutorial when a swine hoves into view. This book isn’t an obsessive doctrinal diatribe, it is a fact by fact rebuttal of the official story.”

All these people writing articles & making videos about how there are no "books for men" anymore? It would be nice if the people writing those articles & making those videos goddam read more than 10 goddam books a goddam year so they goddam knew what they were goddam talking about. Yeesh.

Spoiler: It's too late.

You can't dream up something better to campaign against, true. But you also can't campaign, so it evens out.

‘Bonds and Gestures’ | Giles Harvey Long Island, Colm Tóbín’s sequel to his novel Brooklyn, is a concentrated study of the missed or canceled life.

Giles Harvey writes discerningly on "the fog of enriching implication" in Colm Tóibín's Eilis Lacey novels, "Brooklyn" from 2009 and last year's sequel "Long Island" www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

No reviews????? But .... but ...

"The Venetian footfall and the Venetian cry," recalled Henry James when writing years later about "The Portrait of a Lady", "all talk there, wherever uttered, having the pitch of a call across the water - come in once more at the window."

<br/>Book Review: After Nature — Steve Donoghue In his brilliant new book, Jedediah Purdy argues that humanity must face the collapse of nature using the three tools it knows best: politics, policy, and cold, hard cash

From 10 years ago: Jedediah Purdy's "After Nature," written back in an era when science & religious faith were still separate things and we still had a chance - www.stevedonoghue.com/review-archi...

Aretino's poor pet monkey, Monticchio, used to imitate Titian when he was painting at his easel. Visitors said Monticchio worked hard at his paintings, but nobody bought or preserved any of them.

Eternal reminder to all those procrastinating ponderers out there: "Seven Types of Ambiguity" was written in two weeks by a 21-year-old undergraduate. Stop scrolling and get to work.

Such a Schemozzle, by Sam Sacks The beauty of John McGahern’s prose

“One of McGahern’s most striking childhood memories in ‘All Will Be Well’ is of reading indiscriminately from library books with such deep concentration that his sisters removed his shoes and placed a hat on his head without him noticing.”

@ssacks.bsky.social on Irish novelist John McGahern:

At least a few people in your replies are pointing out the obvious about the "midterms" you mention.

"Dryden's discovery in the 1660s was not that plays and poems are worth discussing," writes the great critic George Watson, "but that they are worth discussing in print."

What a pleasure to review Randall Fuller's smart and moving new book BRIGHT CIRCLE!

He's not daring anybody to stop him. He's acting in the proven knowledge that nobody can. There's a big difference.

<br/>Book Review: Black Earth — Steve Donoghue A harrowing and contentious new assessment of the Nazi war on the Jews of Europe.

From 10 years ago - and from a 100% completely different world - Timothy Snyder's dark, brilliant "BlackEarth": www.stevedonoghue.com/review-archi...

"I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation" - Somerset Maugham, who in 90 years experienced humorous resignation precisely 0 times.

the premise of Good Will Hunting is so funny. "What if there was a boy who was a once in a lifetime genius, handsome, everybody likes him, but tragically he is from South Boston a handicap that threatens to ruin his entire life"

Hah - still, you have to like that "dangerous precision" - that's good!

"He loved the atmosphere of mystery: through labyrinthine sentences we pursue a dangerous precision" - a mid-century critic, very intriguingly, on the novels of Henry James

"There is no doubt that Thomas Wolfe was touched with genius. But genius is not so rare as all that" - so said Struthers Burt, innocent of genius, now completely forgotten.

"I want to reach out with my records to the lonely sheep rancher in Nevada, or the farmer in Kansas, and bring him a glimpse of the ideal world of beauty and inspiration" -- the great Stokowski, speaking a rare, clear truth to Irving Kolodin

OK, I gotta admit, that WAS a very giant-like response ...

That pesky little boy is now a Hollywood action hero - you're DOOOOOOMED

Heh. Plenty of people wrote for Comics Feature (and Comics Journal, and of course Amazing Heroes) without becoming comics giants on their own right! But you did!