Toibin’s Ireland Dear friends and readers, It’s about time I wrote in praise of Colm Toibin, of his biographical and critical essays, of his novels, his biographical fiction, his travel books. I can’t think of any writer as originally thoughtful, perceptive, humane, quietly iconoclastic, informative, absorbing, who reads authors as interesting or simply writes as [...]
Archive for the ‘colm toibin’ Category
In praise of Colm Toibin: un-put-downable
Posted in 20th century culture, colm toibin, henry james, Henry James, men's memoirs, novels of sensibility, sexual experience, women's ilves, tagged Colm Toibin on April 25, 2012 | 4 Comments »
Kaplan’s Henry James: Wonderful yet unsatisfying biography
Posted in 19th century novels, 20th century culture, biography, colm toibin, Henry James on October 17, 2010 | 9 Comments »
Henry James, a photo (1897) This is not the effete young man, or the tired weary old guarded bland one, but an imposing solid guy, distinctive, intense, modern looking too without being (as he is in another) crumpled. Look at the powerful thigh, the stub of a cigar and flat cap. Dear friends and readers, [...]
Henry James’s Roderick Hudson: A novel of displaced homosexuality & thwarted self-development
Posted in 19th century novels, Andrew Davies, colm toibin, Edith Wharton, Henry James, Uncategorized, tagged Golden Bowl, homoeroticism, homosexuaity, Leon Edel, portrait of a lady, Princess Casamassima, Roderick Hudson on September 12, 2010 | 13 Comments »
Pool, Villa D’Este, Tivoli, from Edith Wharton’s Italian Villas and Gardens Dear friends and readers, Over the month of August on Trollope19thCStudies a very few of us read Henry James’s Roderick Hudson, if not James’s first novel, his earliest in print and still read. I had not read it since I was in my early [...]