3Vote!
Peerage News (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
Robert Edward John (Robin) Compton, DL, sometime squire of Newby Hall, near Ripon, North Yorkshire, scion of the Marquesses of Northampton, died 14 Nov 2009, at the age of 87. He was born 11 Jul 1922, son of Edward Robert Francis Compton (1891-1977), A godson of King Edward VII, of Newby Hall, by his 1st wife the former Sylvia Farquharson (of Invercauld). His elder brother, Alwyne (b 1 May 1919) succeeded...
3Vote!
Charlotte Observer: Breaking News (Free subscription) | 11/07/2009
(By Emery P. Dalesio, Associated Press) Police delayed for more than an hour after a chilling emergency call that captured a gunshot before sending officers to the home where a real estate developer killed his family and then himself. The 74-minute delay before officers were dispatched to the home where William Maxwell shot and killed his wife and their two teenage children on Monday is part of an...
3Vote!
Charlotte Observer: Breaking News (Free subscription) | 11/05/2009
(By MARTHA WAGGONER, Associated Press Writer) Hours before William Maxwell slaughtered his family and killed himself, relatives and friends worried about the real estate developer gathered at his home to see if they could lift the normally happy dad from his funk. The youth basketball coach and active church member had been stressed lately, friends said Thursday, and the people closest to him were...
3Vote!
Emdashes (Free subscription) | 11/02/2009
Jonathan Taylor writes : A few overdue links to start the week—you're catching up already! Aldo Buzzi, who was a longtime friend and collaborator of Saul Steinberg, died October 9 . He was 99. "I was born just in time to see the Russia of Chekhov," he wrote in " Cheknov in Sondrio " ( The New Yorker , September 14, 1992), a Sebaldian wandering through time, literature, and...
5Vote!
Anecdotal Evidence (Free subscription) | 09/11/2009
Several times a day at school I cross paths with a woman 20 years my senior who does the job I do with better grace and efficiency. She’s been at it longer and is pleased to share what she knows. Her lessons are devoted to words and tones not technical knowhow or theory, which isn’t of much use with these kids. She’s a reader and English is her third language, acquired in the last...
3Vote!
A Work in Progress (Free subscription) | 09/08/2009
I seem to be reading a lot of fiction lately that is autobiographical in nature. First Dawn Powell's Dance Night and now William Maxwell's The Folded Leaf. I loved the Powell for it's gritty feel and its look inside the...
5Vote!
Anecdotal Evidence (Free subscription) | 09/01/2009
Nige, lucky man, has again savored the pleasures of William Maxwell’s fiction; this time, his 1945 novel The Folded Leaf : “…Maxwell's touch is gossamer light; this is no omniscient narrator crashing onto the scene, nor a puppetmaster peeping out from behind the curtain. All is of a piece, all is one creation. And what a creation! I cannot for the life of me understand why Maxwell...
5Vote!
Books, Inq. (Free subscription) | 08/31/2009
... by Nige: William Maxwell: Gasping Again .
3Vote!
Geranium Cat's Bookshelf (Free subscription) | 08/30/2009
"If brief enthusiasms can make independent booksellers seem fickle, some redemption may be found in our loyalty to individual authors. We often have longer memories than both chain retailers and publishers, and our customers’ support depends on our taste as much as our efficiency. Hot news quickly cools, but the favourites abide: Shirley Hazzard, Javier Marías, Robert Edric, William...
3Vote!
Pete Lit (Free subscription) | 08/21/2009
What do you know? A National Book Award winner that I've actually read: William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow. I read the book last year, and absolutely loved it. Maxwell packs so much meaning and description into so few...
5Vote!
Anecdotal Evidence (Free subscription) | 08/20/2009
“Gathering is peculiar, because you see nothing but what you’re looking for. If you’re picking raspberries, you see only what’s red, and if you’re looking for bones you see only the white.” I know from recent experience it’s possible to gather without knowing what you’re looking for. In Cleveland I gathered memories, ideas about American painting and...
3Vote!
bookeywookey (Free subscription) | 08/06/2009
What’s the most serious book you’ve read recently? Hmmm. If by serious you mean the opposite of fun or funny then I would probably put Children and Grief: When a Parent Dies right at the top of the list, but it was by no means hard to get through. It was accessibly written and kept me interested in a subject one could expect to be hard to take. If by serious you mean really difficult, then...
3Vote!
The Teawife's Tales (Free subscription) | 07/22/2009
This past weekend, Niall and I finally made it over to nearby Cherkley Court & Gardens, which was the home of William Maxwell Aitken, (1879-1964), the first Lord Beaverbrook, and a former Member of Parliament and newspaper mogul. I'm not sure when the house was originally built, but the website notes that it was damaged by fire in 1893. In around 1910, the story goes, that Aitken was driving in...
5Vote!
Politics on the Hudson (Free subscription) | 06/24/2009
Candidates for Carmel town supervisor have dropped from three to two. William Maxwell, a retired police officer, announced by e-mail late Tuesday afternoon he was ending his campaign for Carmel Town Supervisor citing a medical condition related to treatment of a kidney stone condition. A Republican, he did not receive the GOP committee’s endorsement. He said he [...]
1Vote!
Books, Inq. (Free subscription) | 05/14/2009
While I would not go so far as to call William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980) "one of the great books of our age" (as Michael Ondaatje has), this is a special novel, dark and understated. I enjoyed reading it, and found myself moved by its simple - but always poignant - passages: "And some things, once they are done," writes Maxwell, "can't be undone." I'd...
Videos