Book: Ethan Frome

A powerful page-turner with such a vivid premise.  The ending to me is a caricaturish violation, a real letdown.  If that’s any indication of Wharton’s strengths as a writer I wouldn’t bother with the longer works.

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Book: Essays by Wallace Shawn

Striking in the way it makes you think about the war, about the bubble of the elites.  Committed to truthfulness, engagingly written.  Turned me on to Mark Strand.  Ends on kind of a week note about Shawn’s sex writing, about which we’re supposed to be familiar?  As to being understood and acceptance, it does come…

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Albert Finney

struck me after watching Miller’s Crossing again, first time in probably a decade,  Finney at that age would have been perfect for Beecher.  Who else today is like him?

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