Browsing the archives for the Fiction category

9 May 10

Hunger

Herta Müller is the author of  ‘Everything I Possess I Carry With Me’ (German: ‘Atemschaukel’). Last year she won the Nobel Prize for Literature. She is born in Romania (1953) and she has lived under the repressive regime of Ceauşescu. Her father had been a member of the Waffen SS during World War II, in [...]

0 Comments Posted in English, Fiction, Reviews by Cora Stam
25 Nov 09

The Hang of it – by J.D. Salinger

This country lost one of the most promising young men ever to tilt a pinball table when my son, Harry, was conscripted into the Army. As his father, I realize Harry wasn’t born yesterday, but every time I look at the boy I’d swear it all happened sometime early last week. So offhand I’d say [...]

0 Comments Posted in Short Stories by Cora Stam
22 Nov 09

A philosophy of teaching

‘If you would like me to explain my philosophy of teaching I can do so,’ he said. ‘It is quite brief, brief and simple.’
‘Go on,’ I said, ‘let us hear your brief philosophy.’
‘What I call my philosophy of teaching is in fact a philosophy of learning. It comes out of Plato, modified. Before true learning [...]

0 Comments Posted in Fiction by Cora Stam
21 Nov 09

Monkey Tricks or Foul Play (2)

Laziness
I want to add something to this well-known story and tell you about some discoveries I have made in the Bibliothèque National in Paris. Much has been written about Diderot’s nephew and Goethe’s translation. Although the existence of 1821’s publication by de Saur and de Saint-Geniès is known, there has been hardly anyone who has [...]

0 Comments Posted in Literary Forgeries by Cora Stam
20 Nov 09

Monkey Tricks or Foul Play? (1)

Monkey Tricks or Foul Play? the ‘retranslation’ of Diderot’s Le Neveu de Rameau
Introduction
The first time I became aware of Le Neveu de Rameau (Rameau’s Nephew), was during my student years. In a Close Reading Course we students had to read the main work of Hegel, the Phänomenologie des Geistes, (Phenomenology of Spirit). In this work Hegel [...]

0 Comments Posted in Literary Forgeries by Cora Stam
19 Nov 09

A Boy in France, by J.D. Salinger

After he had eaten half a can of pork and egg yolks, the boy laid his head back on the rain-sogged ground, hurtfully wrenched his head out of his helmet, closed his eyes, let his mind empty out from a thousand bungholes, and fell almost instantly asleep. When he awoke, it was nearly ten o’clock–wartime, [...]

0 Comments Posted in Short Stories by Cora Stam
13 Nov 09

Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 102 times to 106 Nobel Laureates between 1901 and 2009. Click on each name to see the Nobel Laureate’s page.
The Laureates from 2009 – 1979:
         2009 – Herta Müller 1953- Germany

2008 – Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio 1940- France
2007 – Doris Lessing 1919- United Kingdom
2006 – Orhan Pamuk [...]

0 Comments Posted in Lists by Cora Stam
10 Nov 09

Fiction

One of our most valuable faculties is our imagination.
Sometimes we need a little help to start this ability, or some stimulation to keep our imagination going.
Surely fiction can go beyond the borders of reason. But fiction may show us also, with delicacy and depth, Life as it is:  honest, painful and sweet.
Besides all the pleasures that fiction [...]

0 Comments Posted in Fiction by Cora Stam