Review essay by Claire Hamner Matturro Key West. Ah, just read the words in a mystery novel and a certain whirl and whoosh of coconut-scented, warm, moist air seems to fly off the pages. From the lush tropical landscape and the complex history to the raucous party atmosphere, from the old-world elegance of the Hemingway […]
Gnostic Vibes: Revisiting Walker Percy’s “Love in the Ruins” (Part I)
October 10, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Essay by Louis Gallo All Percy quotations from Walker Percy, Love In The Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1971), first edition/first printing. The protagonist of Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins, the “Bad Catholic” of the novel’s subtitle, is a […]
“Rear View,” An Essay by Louis Gallo
July 24, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Essay by Louis Gallo A history with scandalous cameo personalities* While away in grad school I sent weekly book reviews to Vieux Carre Courier, an alternative, low-budget newspaper owned by lawyer Jim Derbes and his wife, Ginny. Jim was an old friend from my early teen years. We had met, weirdly enough, over the forty […]
“Hints of Impermanence: Ghosts and Orphans in Gail Godwin’s Grief Cottage,” by Kerstin W. Shands
February 14, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Essay by Kerstin W. Shands Gail Godwin’s new novel Grief Cottage (2017) is set in coastal South Carolina, an area rich in history, legend, and tradition. Evoking a real place and a real environment, Pawleys Island and the Isle of Palms, this novel introduces us to Grief Cottage, a profoundly charged site, a metaphorical rendezvous […]
“Quail Hunting at Little Hobcaw as Inspiration for Robert Ruark’s ‘The Old Man and the Boy,'” by Richard Rankin
February 7, 2018 by 2 Comments
Essay by Richard Rankin Among Robert Ruark’s (1915-1965) complete body of work as a prolific, high-profile newspaper and magazine journalist and bestselling novelist, perhaps his most enduring literary accomplishments are his two sporting classics, The Old Man and the Boy (1957) and The Old Man’s Boy Grows Older (1961). Created from a series of highly […]
“Performing Atonement: Regret, Responsibility, and Redemption in Gail Godwin’s ‘Flora,'” by Kerstin W. Shands
November 16, 2017 by Leave a Comment
Essay by Kerstin W. Shands There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse. (Seneca) There are things we can’t undo, but perhaps there is a kind of constructive remorse that could transform regrettable acts into something of service to life. (Godwin 1) Wistfully […]