Books I'm currently reading...
The Seven Who Fled, by Frederic Prokosch, an elegant novel of Europeans trekking across harsh Asian landscapes in the 1930s. I'm a big fan of rich sensual prose and this book is teeming with it. Prokosch is most noted for a 1983 memoir that was later vilified as an utter hoax.
Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Tales, a classic collection of mid-1800s gothic obsession and paranoia. Macabre tales for macabre times.
Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal, by Jay Parini, an intimate biography of the novelist, essayist, and rather acerbic public intellectual. This is actually the 3rd Vidal biography I've read, the prior ones being the novelist's own 2006 memoir Point to Point Navigation and Michael Mewshaw's 2015 remembrance, Sympathy for the Devil.
Burr, by Gore Vidal, an historical novel of the life of Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson's Vice President, and killer of Alexander Hamilton in an infamous duel fought at Weehawken, NJ in 1804. The acerbic wit is on parade here as our Founding Fathers' foibles are laid bare.
Everyman's Library Pocket Poets: Sondheim, a wonderful selection of clever and evocative lyrics from the career of Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim.
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