Member: lizstansbridge

Noticed you liked The Virgin Suicides, and I was wondering if you'd be interested in reviewing my new novel and posting your comments here as well as a few other book-related sites. Thought you might like my book since it's also about a dysfunctional family and a bit dark. I could e-mail you the novel in an e-book format if you'd like (I'm out of physical copies at the moment). Let me know if you're interested. Here's a link to a summary in case you're interested:

http://christophertusa.com/

Thanks,

Chris

posted by cmtusa at 10:59 pm (EST) on Jun 28, 2009

The Ebony Tower -- a dream of a book. quoting TSE, we leave home only to arrive there again after a lifetime. Me too. Stronghart

posted by Stronghart at 8:11 pm (EST) on May 13, 2009

Aha! By now I have forgotten what sent me to you (!) but when I saw the Beryl Cook I immediately checked to see if my 2 copies had been catalogged. . . nope! (I was sloppy when I joined. . . doubt if I'll ever catch up). Isn't she wonderful? I have "The Works" and "Private View" and will do better reviews of them when I get a chance.

posted by Esta1923 at 12:03 pm (EST) on Jun 29, 2008

Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark, and John Fowles : didactic demons in modern fiction / Richard C. Kane.
Author Kane, Richard C. (Richard Charles)
Call Number 823.91409353 KA
Publisher Rutherford [N.J.] : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press ; London ; Cranbury, NJ : Associated University Presses, c1988.

Liz; If you can find this book it might interest you as I see you have been reading the three authors.

Michael Katz

posted by Stronghart at 8:26 pm (EST) on Apr 4, 2008

Liz: You wrote to me regarding William Wharton, and I replied with a few paragraphs about him. You asked for recommendations way back in December, I think, and procrastinator that I am, with no other excuse, though I could gin up plenty, I have an author recommendation, and a poetry recommendation. I see that you were in the analyst business so I will start off with Irwin Yalom, an existential psychoanalst who writes both fiction and texts on therapy. I have read much of his fiction, and am working on Existential Therapy, a text for therapists, which I am not. It is readable, and very incisive.

While in New York, I came across a book by a poet who I did not know. Harold Norse. The title,"In the Hub of the Fiery Force," drew me in, and the next thing I knew I purchased a copy.

He writes four verses of a poem called, "the photograph." I quote only a few lines:

"This little square of time, this black and white
emblem..."

"...Here
in the fantoccini stare, the waxen child
looks out forever at the man who looks back
knowing he never will outlast the child..." and

"This little square of time, this rectangle
whose right angles measure not space but time..."

and here is part of another, very appropriate today considering our governors gone wild:

"Let the dogs hump in the streets
I'd do the same if they'd let me
those guardians of public morals
who fear the horrors of pleasure
more than the horrors of war."

He wrote that in 1971.
Oh, yes, "Fantoccini" let's look it up:
mechanically worked puppets, a marionette show. (Oxford Shorter)

My emails are Gratwicker@aol.com; and BusterStronghart@gmail.com; feel free to write or not. Please insert "LibraryThing" in the subject line...

posted by Stronghart at 12:41 am (EST) on Mar 23, 2008

Hi, just photographed and uploaded the vcover of "coast and estaries". You can use it, of course.

Erik

posted by kingfishererik at 5:14 am (EST) on Jan 10, 2008

Hi Liz:
William Wharton was (?) an artist living in Paris after serving in WW2, in combat. You know his war experience from reading Birdy and Midnight Clear. Apparantly he wrote Birdy during a painter's dry spell, and it became the hit it became. WW is a pen-name. I do not know whether his real name has been revealed, or even if it is important to do so. Some of the book covers of his works were reproductions of his work. I am not much of a critic, having spent most of my life behind a counter as an owner of a few drug stores in Brooklyn, but I recognize in his writing a painterly, descriptive quality that I have seen in no other author.

The tragedy of his life occurred in the State of Washington. His daughter, an adult, had been complaining about the fires set by farmers every year as a method of fertilizing the next year's crop or as a method of clearing their fields. Her complaint was that the smoke caused by the fires obscured the view of drivers on a highway which she used daily. She was killed in a terrible automobile accident caused by that very smoke. Wharton stopped writing.

He did write one more piece for the Atlantic or Harpers, in which he described this event. As far as I know, he never wrote again. If he is alive he would be in his eighties, as he was a soldier in WW2.

posted by Stronghart at 11:10 pm (EST) on Nov 23, 2007

Wlliam Wharton: a tragic story, I see he is one of your favorites. Mine too.

posted by Stronghart at 7:58 am (EST) on Sep 30, 2007