A New Virgil
This semester I'm using Sarah Ruden's new translation of Virgil's Aeneid in my course in great literary works (The Human Condition). I gave the translation a very positive review last year in The New...
View ArticleMichelson's Poetry
We were fortunate to have the poet Seth Michelson as Senior Tutor in the Honors College for a few years at Adelphi University. Those alumni he taught have wonderful memories. Today I'd like to take a...
View ArticleA night at the Opera, Turandot
Last night I attended Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera along with a group of Adelphi University Honors College students. This was the season premier of one of the Met's most spectacular productions,...
View ArticleThe soul of polytheistic desire
This morning my Adelphi Honors College students and I will discuss books 9 and 10 of the Aeneid. In book 9 Nisus, feeling an urge to act asks himself, "Is it the gods who make me want this, or do we...
View ArticleWheeldon ballet, Morphoses
Sunday afternoon Adelphi University Honors College students enjoyed the last performance this season of Christopher Wheeldon's ballet company Morphoses. And I do mean they enjoyed it...The program at...
View ArticleA view of the unseen
Academicals that is. Last night I read Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld novel, Unseen Academicals. The book came as a recommendation from one of our Adelphi University Honors College graduates who's...
View ArticleHey Jude!
Last night with Gregory Mercurio, one of the Adelphi University Honors College Academic Directors, I saw Jude Law in Hamlet again. His performance continues to astonish, and I thought I might add some...
View ArticleThe Lazarus Project
Tonight I will have dinner and a book discussion with several students from Adelphi University's Honors College. Our novel: Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project. Hemon won a "genius grant" from the...
View ArticleBarbers of Seville and Siberia
A slim but real connection--in the past few days I saw The Barber of Seville at the Metropolitan Opera and watched--long overdue--Nikita Mikhalkov's lovely film The Barber of Siberia. Both provided...
View ArticleUpdike's The Centaur: First look
Saturday evening I had dinner and book discussion at my house with Adelphi University Honors College alumni. Our book for the evening, John Updike's The Centaur.Next week I'll be discussing the same...
View ArticleTwo films
I intended to review Classic Stage Company's production of Age of Iron today. But a sick actor resulted in a cancellation of last night's performance. So instead, my thoughts on two films I recently...
View ArticleWolf Hall
I've been away for awhile, and I have theatrical and musical experiences to report. But first one of my most recent reading experiences, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, a book that may appear on more top...
View ArticleByatt's latest
Next on the holiday reading list: A. S. Byatt's The Children's Book. Conclusions first: I enjoyed this novel immensely and am glad I read it. Having said that, I'm not sure what to make of the book as...
View ArticleRansom, a novel
The novel Ransom, by David Malouf, one of Australia's greatest living writers--perhap its greatest--is an expanded treatment of the encounter between Priam and Achilles as described in the last book of...
View ArticleThe Lost Books of the Odyssey
Here's a better entry in the category of books inspired by the Homeric epics: The Lost Books of the Odyssey, a first novel from Zachary Mason. Although I hoped for it to be even better, I think it's...
View ArticleKurosawa
I've been watching a lot of Japanese film lately--Oshima, Mizoguchi, and Imamura--but most of all Akira Kurosawa. And the more I watch, the more Kurosawa's films grow on me and gain my admiration.You...
View ArticleBolaño
Roberto Bolaño is a new author for me, and after two novels I think I'm going to read several more. For today I'll say a little about Monsieur Pain and the massive novel 2666.First, 2666. This, was...
View ArticleSteps: 12? 39?
Hi. I'm Richard Garner, and I'm a Hitchcockaholic. Some of you may have seen the recent Broadway production 39 Steps, a roller-coaster rambunctious hilarious adaptation of Hitchcock's movie of the same...
View ArticleThe Eclipse
In 1962 I was a nine-year old in a tiny old-fashioned town, essentially still a 1950s world. My main concern was my crush on Ceci Gaston. But she was only interested in Gene Pitman. I have to admit,...
View ArticleMy tribe
Yesterday I taped a television show moderated by Adelphi's President Scott. As we were talking about the way in which the extended family seems to be shrinking in the 21st century, one of the...
View ArticleRipling Beauty
My guess is you're familiar with the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley based on Patricia Highsmith's novel. It's a dazzler, with Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Jude Law, Philip Seymour...
View ArticleRossellini's Troubling Trilogy
Why did Ingrid Bergman leave a brilliant Hollywood career to make films in Europe with amateurs in difficult often frankly inadequate conditions? She saw Roberto Rossellini's post-WWII film trilogy,...
View ArticleAnother Hamlet
Last night Adelphi Honors College students and I saw Hamlet--but not on Broadway as we did last fall. This was the rather rarely staged opera by Ambroise Thomas in a new production at the Metropolitan...
View ArticleBooks about reading
Wednesday night Adelphi Honors College students will be coming to my house for dinner and a discussion of Italo Calvino's 1979 novel If on a winter's night a traveler. Right now the Honors class I'm...
View ArticleToday's (metaphysical) weather
As I get older, physical existence seems increasingly peculiar. Odd, in the morning, to give all that attention to teeth and hair and skin, washing, brushing, flossing. And paying attention to the...
View ArticleThe effects of writing
Tonight Adelphi Honors College students will be coming to my house for dinner and a discussion of A.S. Byatt's novel Possession. I plan to write about that tomorrow. But the novel in part examines how...
View ArticlePossession
Last week Adelphi Honors College students came to my house for dinner and a discussion of A.S. Byatt's novel Possession. In rereading the novel, thinking about it, and discussing it, I came to like it...
View ArticleNights at the Opera
Twice this week I was at the Metropolitan Opera, last night with Adelphi Honors College students for Verbi's La Traviata and the night before on my own to hear Jonas Kaufmann in Puccini's Tosca. In my...
View ArticleNabokov's Ada, Reality, and the Future
Last week Adelphi Honors College students came to my house for dinner and discussion of Nabokov's longest and in many ways richest novel, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle.Rereading the novel for this...
View ArticleSolar
This weekend I read Ian McEwan's latest novel Solar. The blend of comedy and tragedy, satire and seriousness that McEwan dishes up for us here appeals to me more than it has to any of the reviewers...
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