I came across the podcast by the Paris Review entitled Making Light. In it is a wonderful short story by Philip Roth. It is one of the best writing ever. Period. I was glued to my chair. The podcast version of the story is superb. The story starts around minute 10 of the podcast. But I suggest you listen to the entire podcast. It is a treat.
Listen to Making Light.
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Diary, Politics, Books, Poetry

Click on picture to watch “The Hill we Climb”.
Transcript below
After many years, I had the chance to reread Kafka’s Metamorphosis. When I first encountered the piece, I was enthralled by the thought experiment Kafka pursued in the story. What if you wake up in the morning and you have turned into a little bug, but you still have your full consciousness? You can still understand what human beings are saying but they cannot understand you anymore and they see you a non-human terrifying, little creature to run away from. How would you feel? How would you cope with this situation?
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WHO learns my lesson complete? Boss and journeyman and apprentice? . . . . churchman and atheist? The stupid and the wise thinker . . . . parents and offspring . . . . merchant and clerk and porter and customer . . . . editor, author, artist and schoolboy? Draw nigh and commence, It is no lesson . . . . it lets down the bars to a good lesson, And that to another . . . . and every one to another still.
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When Gabriel Garcia Marquez died last week, I was inspired to get myself a copy of the novel that made him famous. I am now about 20 pages into Love in the Time of Cholera, which is available as an e-book on Google Play. So far the book is fabulous. Stay tuned for a full review when I am done with the book. May 2014: It turned out the early promise of the book did not continue all the way to the end. I found myself struggling later, feeling that the story was constructed. It is not a book that I will give out as present.
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I am still high from reading this fantastic novel. A week ago I started reading this deep story about life and death composed by Gaito Gazdanov in Russian.
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In October 2012, I started reading Middlesex. It did not know until I started this book that a certain percentage of people are neither fully male nor female.
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