D. A. Hosek

Author: D. A. Hosek

  • Trying to Say God—Friday morning

    The morning  egan with Randy Boyagoda’s talk, “Trying to say God without sounding like Marilynne Robinson.” Boyagoda’s thesis was that the first and primary purpose of literature i to increase charity and towards that end he did a dive into a novel by Mary McCarthy, The Group and a story by David Constantin, “The Loss.” This was…

  • Opening day of the Trying to Say God conference

    After a two hour trip on the South Shore Railroad (“The most uncomfortable seats on rails”™), I ended up at the South Bend Airport (“both taxis in South Bend are already here”™) and made my way to  otre Dame University for the “Trying to Say God” conference. This is a conference whose animating spirit is “revitalizing…

  • Beautiful Sentences: Elie Wiesel

    I’m past all desires; too many dead people dwell within me. Elie Wiesel, The Judges.

  • Dewey Decimal Project: 447.09 GEN Merde Encore!

    The 440s bring me to French. I’m still not up to actually learning a language and this book is thin and looks promising. It turns out that it’s mildly more interesting than reading a dictionary. I kind of hoped that literal translations of some of the expressions would have been provided, but I guess more functionality…

  • Beautiful Sentences: William Faulkner

    I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind—and that of the minds of the ones who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality…

  • Beautiful Sentences: Elie Wiesel

    What if they tried to play tricks with your memory in order to attack the thing it protects—your soul? Elie Wiesel, The Judges.

  • Beautiful Sentences: Maria Semple

    This is why you must love life: one day you’re offering up your social security number to the Russia Mafia; two weeks later you’re using the word calve as a verb. Maria Semple, Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

  • Dewey Decimal Project: 439.1 WEX Just Say Nu : Yiddish For Every Occasion (When English Just Won’t Do)

    As I continue through the 400s, I also strive to avoid having to learn another language. The 430s are German and Germanic languages and I decide on this book,  hich looks like it might not be a real learn Yiddish book to check off this decade. It turns out that Wex has written something that’s a…

  • Beautiful Sentences: Keith Ridgway

    She liked art. She liked paintings and video art and photography. She liked to read about artists and she liked to hear them talk. She had been to all the big London art museums already, and she had been to some small ones too, and some galleries. She wanted to be an artist, she thought,…