Introduction: A Bi-Weekly Column – Insights, Opinions, Judgements, and Candor

Hello Gentle Reader

I have never been one who has been shy of having an opinion, passing judgement, possessing insight, and of course releasing it all with great candor. I’ve been limited in my blog to just book reviews, Nobel speculation, and personal reportage of literary events and awards—which lately has been limited to obituaries of recently departed authors, most recently: Ursula Le Guin. Yet as of late, I don't always have the financial funds to purchase books, and of course being someone of practical mind set, I cannot purchase books when the finances need to be allocated in other directions.  Still, why should this inconvenience set me back from sharing my perspectives and opinions with you—only this time on a wider of variety of subjects! Of course the matter posted and discussed is of my choosing, with my own attached perspectives, opinions, judgments, criticisms, and candor. It is of course my goal to ensure the column is as eclectic and eccentric as possible, with a dash of wit, irony and a heaping scoop of vitriol. Topics can and will range from: the uselessness of communication courses, to the trivialities of post-secondary education, to the terrors of work, to the unique politics of toxic work environments, to the difference between a boss, leader, and manager (and of course: how they are all the same), to my thoughts on writers for whatever reason, be it admiration or trepidation. The column should be posted on Tuesdays; starting with the first column being posted Tuesday, February 6^th 2018; and hopefully becoming a regular bi-weekly event. 

Thank-you so much Gentle Reader for your patience, kindness, comments, and continual readership!

Until February 6th Gentle Reader!

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

M. Mary

P.S. A Review of Bae Suah's novel "Recitation," will be post Early February as well. 

Edit - Hello Gentle Reader, the two first columns are up -- please find the label Tea On a Tuesday  

Ursula Le Guin, Pioneer of fantasy and science fiction, dies aged 88

Hello Gentle Reader

Ursula Le Guin was one of the greatest pioneers of fantasy and science fiction, for nearly a half a century, where she became an ambassador and advocate of the genre fiction, always striving and attempting to bring its merits to the grander literary heights. Ursula Le Guin concreted her career as a voice of epic proportions during the late sixties, with the publication of “A Wizard of Earthsea,” followed by her highly acclaimed science fiction novel “The Left Hand of Darkness.” “The Left Hand of Darkness,” became one core reading materials during early university studies, where science fiction was considered an acceptable form of writing, which displayed how the human race adapted to theoretical changes. Due to its subvert tackling of themes of gender “The Left Hand of Darkness,” also become a core component of the feminist movement of the time. It was during this time, Ursula Le Guin became one of science fiction’s greatest advocates, who attempted to move science fiction and fantasy away from the literary ghetto it had been placed in, and see it taken seriously like any other form of literature. Her “Earthsea,” stories and novels themselves have been compared to the work of C.S. Lewis’s “Narnia.” In the cycle of fantasy stories, Le Guin explored concepts of Carl Jung’s psychological theories, and Taoism, she moved in the opposite direction of J.R.R. Tolkien, and his grand epic narratives and battles, and focused on the less then unique characters as they traverse the archipelago world of Earthsea, and takes considerable note of the economy and social structure of the world, as well as the mundane day to day lives of her characters. As she matured and aged through the years, Ursula Le Guin became a fierce critic of the literary establishment, where she would openly unleash her candid insights. She criticized her friend Margaret Atwood, for refusing to acknowledge some of her works as being science fiction, so that Atwood would retain her high literary sensibilities, while avoiding being placed in the literary ghetto. She viciously swung at Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, for his novel “The Buried Giant,” and the attempts between publisher and author from playing down the fantastic elements of the novel. It was during this time; Ursula Le Guin had become something of a mother of her tribe, where her works are now considered both entertaining and insightful. She is considered one of the greatest writers of genre fiction during her time, along with: Samuel R Delaney and Roger Zelazny. Throughtout her life, Le Guin had proven to be prolific and apt in many literary genres, beyond the short story and novel, she was a noted poet, and her later years became vastly prolific in essays and columns, where she shared her views and perspectives of the changing literary format. Now numerous writers, readers, and admires all pay their respect to Ursula Le Guin, for her candid insights, her moving and explorative fantasy and science novels, and for her advocacy for genre fiction to be considered more seriously in literary theory and culture.

Rest in Peace Ursula Le Guin.

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

M. Mary

The following are pieces written by Margaret Atwood and David Mitchell, where they pay their respects to their friend and colleague. 

Margaret Atwood

David Mitchell

Nicanor Parra, Dies Aged 103

Hello Gentle Reader

Nicanor Parra the eminent Chilean scientist and poet, who was often considered the contrary antonym to Nobel Laurate and fellow Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, has died at the age of 103, on January 23^rd. Where Neruda was noted for his poetry of high lyricism, Parra did the complete opposite, he stripped poetry of its flowery imagery and vague symbolism, and instead instituted and wrote in a style known for its confrontational tone, dark comedic undertones, and stripped his poetry of any resemblance of high lyricism of previous generations. Nicanor Parra’s poetry was often called: “anti-poetry,” due to Parra has been quoted as saying, he wanted to bringing poetry down from ‘mount Olympus,’ and speaks to the everyday person. Since his debut and throughout his poetry career, Nicanor Parra was considered one of the most powerful and influential writers of his generation. Harold Bloom has called Nicanor Parra as essential as Walt Whitman, and in two –thousand and eleven he won the Cervantes Prize, the highest and most distinguished literary award of a Spanish language author. He was a perennial Nobel Laureate, but would never receive the highest literary accolade; yet despite the lack of Nobel recognition, Nicanor Parra poetry was known for rejecting the romanticism of the time, where heroic deeds were serenaded and sung with the ideals of a long lost era, but alienated the common person from the themes and narrative enclosed. Narra on the flipside wrote about the overworked office worker, the bad ladies, the hoodlums, the unemployed, and wrote about their disenfranchised realities and struggles with humour and frankness, and would gather support and acclaim from the general public for making poetry accessible to the common day person. His poetry was often notably influenced by his scientific studies, education and profession, as well as other writers such as Franz Kafka and T.S. Eliot. His acclaim and poetry was also met with controversy and refutes, questioning his literary merit. Some called his work immoral, filthy, and showcased contempt for women, religion, love, virtue and beauty—and saw him as a fading star who would never achieve anything beyond his momentary recognition. They were wrong, Nicanor Parra would continue to write poetry, be an expert on Newtonian Physics, and influence poets throughout the world, including the Beat Generation. In the end it is said Nicanor Parra taught physics to survive, and wrote poetry to stay alive, and it paid off, he is considered one of the most prominent Spanish language poets of the twentieth century, whose influence was seen and felt throughout the Spanish language, South America, and other poets throughout the world.

Truly the world is deprived without Nicanor Parra, whose poetry revolutionized the format and its audience that it spoke to. Rest in Peace Nicanor Parra. 

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

M. Mary

The Nobel Prize for Literature: 1967 Nominations

Hello Gentle Reader

It is famously noted that the Nobel Prizes are veiled in secrecy, thanks to Alfred Nobel’s wills and its enclosed statues, with one of those statues being: the nominations of each year’s prize must be kept secret for fifty years. Fifty years prior the Nobel Prize for Literature in nineteen-sixty seven was awarded to the Guatemalan writer and diplomat: Miguel Ángel Asturias.

Miguel Ángel Asturias is perhaps most famous for being a ‘forgotten laureate.’ Whenever journalists, critics, and bloggers create shadow lists and alternatives to previous Nobel Laureates, Jorge Luis Borges is considered the alternative to Miguel Ángel Asturias. In the spirit of fairness, Jorge Luis Borges had weathered the sands of time and history far better than Miguel Ángel Asturias. In that regard the famous apothegm is applied to the Swedish Academy’s decisions: sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they get it wrong. In the case of Miguel Ángel Asturias (among other early Nobel Laureates) the Academy’s decision did not weather the seas of time and age well.

1967 proved to be another year of debate within the Swedish Academy and its Nobel Committee. Anders Österling chairman of the Nobel Committee had presented the following writers as the candidates for the year’s Nobel Prize for Literature:

Graham Greene

Yasunari Kawabata

W.H. Auden

The above candidates were opposed by Eyvind Johnson, Henry Olsson and Erik Lindegren, with support from Karl Ragnar Gierow, who instead offered the following authors as candidates for the award:

Miguel Ángel Asturias & Jorge Luis Borges

W.H. Auden

Yasunari Kawabata

During the discussions of who the year’s winner would be, the Swedish Academy decided to award Miguel Ángel Asturias solely, rather than split award between Miguel Ángel Asturias and Jorge Luis Borges, on the grounds that they had split the award prior in 1966 to Nelly Sachs and the forgotten Shmuel Yosef Agnon.

W.H Auden would die six years later without receiving the award. Jorge Luis Borges would die nineteen years later, without receiving the Nobel Prize, which greatly distressed and annoyed the writer, who once remarked his omission had become a Scandinavian Tradition. Graham Greene would die twenty-four years later without receiving the award. Despite not receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, all three writers are considered giants and milestones in twentieth century literature. While Yasunari Kawabata would go on to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968.

As it stands the Nobel Prize website has not yet released the transcript of conversations taken place within during this time. So I am unable to comment on the debate and discussion which surrounded Miguel Ángel Asturias and his eventual award. All the information which has already been provided is fragmentary, and the best that I was capable of unearthing, at this time.  However, we do have a list of nominees and candidates and the list itself is particular unique.

The most nominated writers for the award in 1967 were:

The Spanish journalist, essayist, right wing intellectual (ironic), and poet: José María Pemán with eight nominations

The Irish playwright (and arguably the most famous English language playwright of the 20^th century), casual novelist and poet: Samuel Beckett, with six nominations. It should also be noted Beckett had been nominated years prior but was resisted by some members of the committee and academy, who viewed his works as nihilist and not fitting into the ‘ideal,’ qualities and clauses of Alfred Nobel’s instructions when awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature. He would later go on to win in 1969.

The Brazilian writer Jorge Amado and French novelist André Malraux, had five nominations each.

The Norwegian poet and novelist Tarjei Vesaas and the Dutch doctor, novelist and essayist Simon Vestdijk, both had four nominations. It should also be noted, it is recorded that Simon Vestdijk was nominated fifteen times for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Australian poet and environmental activist and aboriginal activist, Judith Wright, also received four nominations.

1967 was also be the first year where two future Nobel Laureates were first nominated: Saul Bellow and the now forgotten (and difficult) Claude Simon. Both writes would win the award in 1976 and 1985.

The Swedish Academy also reserves the right to nominate authors they view as worthy candidates. The following list are members of the Swedish Academy and their nominated writers:

Henry Olsson nominated: Miguel Ángel Asturias and Jorge Luis Borges, Witold Gombrowicz

Lars Gyllensten nominated: Alejo Carpentier, Rómulo Gallegos

Karl Ragnar Gierow nominated: Jean Genet, Graham Greene, and Eugene Ionesco

Erik Lindegren nominated: György Lukács, Claude Simon

Gunnar Ekelöf nominated: Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Harry Martinson nominated: Yukio Mishima

Eyvind Johnson nominated: Konstantin Paustovsky and Arnulf Øverland

It is interesting to see members of the Swedish Academy’s nominations, and their attempts at having a broad literary perspective ranging from poetry to prose, but also locale and language. For example: Jorge Luis Borges and Alejo Carpentier were considered great precursors to the eventual Latin American Boom writers such as: Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. Gunnar Ekelöf would nominate one of the most important Brazilian poets of twentieth century: Carlos Drummond de Andrade, who would die twenty years later without receiving the Nobel nod. Erik Lindegren nominated Claude Simon for the first time. The late modernist French writer would later go on to win the Nobel Prize in 1985 at the age of seventy-two.

Karl Ragnar Gierow nomination of Jean Genet is strikingly unique. Jean Genet was a controversial French writer, whose work explicitly dealt with homosexual affairs, persecutions, and of course sex. He was a famous social activist against the systematic persecution, prosecution and discrimination of homosexual people, among other individuals and social groups deemed ‘deviant.’ Genet may have spat and sparred with politicians and public opinion with his ideals of egalitarianism, he would still be a shocking and controversial laureate if taken seriously.

Harry Martinson was noted for his appreciation and interest of Eastern cultures, and in years prior he was known for championing Yasunari Kawabata as well as Yukio Mishima as candidates for the Nobel Prize for Literature. His nominations paid off, as it appears that Martinson no longer felt required to champion and nominate Yasunari Kawabata, who at this point was a well-known writer and perennial candidate for the prize.  On a side note, it is often speculated and theorized that when Yasunari Kawabata won the Nobel Prize, it was part of the reason his protégé, Yukio Mishima, committed suicide.

Nelly Sachs one of the Laureates from the year prior had nominated Samuel Beckett for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1967. It is not known at this time if Nelly Sachs presented any rationale or reason behind the nomination. Perhaps though the poet, who was also a casual playwright, had seen some of Beckett’s plays staged, whereupon she was able to see past the superficial nihilist presentations and appreciate the comedic elements of Beckett’s plays, where he presented the absurdities of life and the individuals comedic attempts at finding meaning and worth in an inherently deprived world.

An interesting final note Gentle Reader, of the nominated writes for this year, three writers are still alive who were originally nominated in 1967:

Ukrainian poet: Lina Kostenko

German poet: Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Ukrainian poet and political activist: Ivan Drach

This would be a bittersweet revelation for the above writers, or perhaps a unique achievement to witness in their advanced years. The nomination of Lina Kostenko was perhaps preemptive; when she was nominated she had just recently published three collections of poetry and was thirty-seven years old. Kostenko found immediate popularity with the Ukrainian reading public. Lina Kostenko would be forced into silence and a publication ban, due to her refusal to cooperate with the Soviet authorities and censorship of the time. Afterwards she only published four further collections of poetry, a children’s book, as well as a ‘Selected Works,’ publication in nineteen-eighty nine. In more recent memory Lina Kostenko had published her debut novel in two-thousand and ten. Now at the age of eighty-seven Lina Kostenko has recognition that she was nominated for the Nobel Prize.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, was only thirty-eight when he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, but since then he has become one of the most renowned German language poets of his generation. Enzensberger is perhaps well renowned for his poetry, but he is also known for his essays and political commentary, as well as writing a libretto with Irene Disch. In two-thousand and nine he received a special Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust, for his excellence in poetry as a literary form. Hans Magnus Enzensberger is no eighty-eight years old and the chances of a Nobel Prize for Literature now are slim.

Ivan Drach was the youngest writer to be nominated for the award in 1967 at the age of thirty-one, and had only two collections of poetry to his name when he was nominated. His final collection of poetry was published in nineteen-ninety five. Since then Drach has been active in politics and the promotion of the Ukrainian language.

The above writers all have the unique perspective of knowing they were at one point in time nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Now though their chances have certainly dwindled, due to age or a lack of relevant output.

At this point my dear Gentle Reader, I have no information or idea why Miguel Ángel Asturias became the successful writer to become the Nobel Laureate of the time, only to fade into oblivion, irrelevance, and a mere passing footnote on history, while other writers of the time such as Jorge Luis Borges have aged well and successful fought off the same fate. I am also unsure why by Eyvind Johnson, Henry Olsson and Erik Lindegren decided to omit Graham Greene from their alternative list, and instead promoted Miguel Ángel Asturias and Jorge Luis Borges. In time the Nobel Prize website will most likely update its information, at which point hopefully I will be able to edit update this post with further information in regards to the 1967 nominations and eventual laureate.

Until then Gentle Reader

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

M. Mary

Aharon Applefeld, Dies Aged 85

Hello Gentle Reader

Aharon Applefeld was a celebrated Israeli author, whose early life was marked and scarred by the Second World War and the Holocaust, has died recently at the age of eighty five years old.  Applefeld was born February 16^th 1932, in a part of Romania (which now is enclosed in the Ukraine). During the Second World War, Aharon Applefeld along with his father was sent to a German labour camp in the Romanian controlled district of Transnistria. The young Applefeld escaped the camp and would later hide in the forest, where he was adopted by a band of Ukrainian bandits, where he was able to pick up a bit of the Ukrainian language. After two years living with the Ukrainian bandits and working as a gopher; Applefeld would work as a cook in the Red Army, where he learned Russian; during this time he also lived with a prostitute for five months, and later spent time in Italy in a refugee camp where he picked up a bit of Italian. Throughout most of his childhood Aharon Applefeld, was under the impression that his father had died in the labour camp; however, he would find his father’s name on a Jewish Agency list, and would locate his father without preemptive notice, to ensure it was his father. The reunion was emotional and difficult; Applefeld never wrote about it, only made slight references to it in interviews. Throughout his life, Aharon Applefeld was highly regarded as a prominent Israeli writer, despite in his youth he did not read a Hebrew language book until he was twenty-five, and did not know any aspect of the Hebrew language until he was fourteen or fifteen he immigrated to Israel. Learning and reading Hebrew, Applefeld had described it as torturous due to the fact he had to look up so many words in the dictionary. Yet as he aged, Aharon Applefeld would go on to learn Yiddish as well as English. His literary output is noted for being overshadowed by the holocaust and marred by his early experiences at life. His themes and subject matter often dealt with displacement, disorientation, guilt and grief, the cruelty of man, and the experience of loss of home, normalcy, and family.

Rest in Peace Aharon Applefeld, God knows you deserve it.

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

M. Mary

The Child Poet

Hello Gentle Reader

Grandmother used to say: life is merely the custard between birth and grave. Despite the deceptive simplicity of a straight forwarded chronological order in how one views a life; how one describes s a life is anything but a streamlined timeline. Life is composed by experiences and perceptions, which become memories—though memories themselves are finicky in how they are recalled. It’s a sight, or a scent, or meeting someone again, or being in a familiar place; sometimes they are evoked just by lying in bed.  They come with firefly flashes of brilliance and inspiration, or with the haunting flicker of a moth’s dance to prick with poignancy and regret. Despite an individual’s existence moving through a predetermined course through time, their life itself is reduced to experience, perception and memories. These experiences and perceptions, however, vary and include numerous events; from the mundane, myopic and micro, to the profound, politic, and macro. When drafting a biography or autobiography, one often needs to ask themselves what they include. What events need to be taken in consideration when composing the complete story of an individual’s life? Of course there are the usual facts to include in a biography: when they are born, where they are born, to who they are born to? The biographer may offer a brief detour into the lives of the parents; which may offer an inclination or idea of the early home life of their chosen subject. Take for example the parents of Doris Lessing and Herta Müller.

Doris Lessing’s parents, immortalized in her final published work: “Alfred & Emily,” were often noted by the author as being an ill-suited match, and both destroyed by the Great War (World War I). Lessing’s father would lose his leg while fighting in the war, and would recuperate at a hospital, where Lessing’s mother worked as a nurse, continuously under the strain and screams of debilitated soldier’s withering in pain, with no prescription aid to assist or relieve them of their suffering. The wounded solider and the exhausted nurse would marry though, and so would begin their unhappy life together, which started in Persia (now Iran), where Alfred worked in the Imperial Persian Bank, before selling everything and moving to South Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to farm. The farm performed poorly; and the family was always short money. Emily was a woman who wanted to live and lead a typical Edwardian life, but the financial hardship of the farm and their situation made that impossible. The young Doris Lessing observed her parents with pity: her mother starving and craving intellectual stimulation would have been better off in London, while her father was a near invalid man struck with diabetes. Lessing would later admit in her autobiography that she would never grow up to be like these two sick and crazy people; she would actively avoid becoming either shadow or form of her parents; and for the most part, she did. She went on to become one of the most controversial and headstrong writers of the twentieth century, she was self-taught, read v ferociously, and had an opinion on politics and social concerns.—though she made obvious blunders. Yet, she despised her early life. It was well known and even documented, that she found her mother suffocating, as she doted and smothered her children, due to a lack of purpose; which would eventually force the author out of the house at the early age of fifteen. She was resilient but not necessarily forgiving; but she made peace with her parents in her final book where she attempted to envision and offer them a better life more suited to them then their reality.

The case of Herta Müller is familiar. Her childhood was overshadowed by political situations which preceded her birth and would oppress the first part of her life. Her father fought in the Second World War—heralding as a Romanian-German, from the Banat region, he idealistically enrolls and joins the Waffen-SS of the Nazi German army; the failed ideals of the fatherland land, along with the defeat of the Nazis soured the man. The war haunts the house; but it is never spoken of. The fact that he joined the Waffen-SS and fought alongside the Nazis (a terrible evil the world has ever seen) is never mentioned in the house—the subject is taboo; even though he doesn’t distance himself from ‘national socialism.’ The mother suffers from a tragedy of heritage and language, as well as circumstance and age. In nineteen-forty five at the age of seventeen, she is selected to be sent away to a forced Soviet Labour Camp; where she spends five years in deplorable and arbitrary conditions. There she meets another prisoner whose name is: Herta; and she promises this prison mate: if she gets out, she will name her daughter after her. The two parents do meet, though their marriage would not be described as happy. Her father is an alcoholic, and he dies at a young age. Her mother is scarred by the experience in the Gulag, but works to maintain a household under the circumstances with her husband as well as the communist climate of the time. The oppression of her parents, secrets and lies, hidden pasts, oppression, authoritarianism, and tyranny—these are but a few themes of Herta Müller’s work, which have been taken from her childhood, her home life, the political atmosphere of the time.

Homero Aridjis has an impressive resume: he’s a poet, novelist, journalist, environmental activist, as well as diplomat for the Mexican government. He is more famous for his writings then his diplomatic missions and activities; specifically speaking his poetry, which is noted for its rich imagination, lyrical quality, beautiful imagery, and preoccupation with themes such as the environment, ethical independence, and dealing with the primeval themes of life and death, in the context of memory. “The Child Poet,” is liberally described as an autobiography, narrated through memory and dreams. This is slightly true to a degree. “The Child Poet,” is comprised of lyrical vignettes which detail both dream and memory (imagined and real), and offers a unique self-portrait of the poets childhood. The quality of the writing is expert and grand, with the grace and lightness lyricism of a poet, with the subtle surreal nature of the subconscious. Throughout the entire memoir, Homero Aridjis probes the catacombs of his memories now tainted by the subconscious and redefined by his imagination, presenting a unique portrait of his home village, its inhabitants and the unique life, folktales, and stories to be found there. The unique characters who drift throughout the fragmentary narratives; such as the merciless cacique (or local boss—much like a gangster), peasant farmers (campesinos) attempting to make a living or make make a buck by selling corn, his blind aunt Inés, whose body was racked with age, but whose heart was virginal in purity, writes personal ads where she depicts herself as youthful, beautiful, in order to gather some interest; then there is the deftly comedic teacher who reminds his students that when they draft their winter compositions (I presume essays over the winter break), that they should not forget snow. Ever keen on the environment, Homero Aridjis can describe the landscape and environment with unique flare; from harsh brutalism to the welcoming stark wastes of home.

Through this fragmentary narrative Homero Aridjis traces the defining moments of his life presented in his childhood. The first moment being the physical brith, in which he came into the world screaming and wailing—and as Emily Dickinson states the situation best: “Life is starting/it leaves little for anything else.” Then comes’ the second spiritual birth, when the young child accidently shoots himself with a loaded shotgun. From there the poet is born. The young Homero Aridjis had retreated slightly from the material world, favoring intellectual and cultural pursuits, as well as introverted interests, such as reading the classics of literature, and sitting at the kitchen table writing poetry and stories. He no longer was out running with his siblings or playing soccer; he had reserved himself to a more unique world—a quieter world. These contrary and polar opposites plays with the ideas of light and shadow, as does most of the memories as it explores the world through this dichotomous scale.

“The Child Poet,” is lovingly translated by Chloe Aridjis, who in her introduction to her father’s book, recounts how it was thanks to her, the collected memories came into existence. As an expecting father Homero Aridjis, dreamed vivid dreams of his childhood spent growing up in Contepec, as well as memories now informed by imagination. It is then Homero Aridjis begun to document these dreams and memories, before finally publishing them as “The Child Poet.” Despite it being a dream journal and hazy recollections of partial dreams, “The Child Poet,” is perhaps the most adequate and most honest autobiography and memoir that I have read. The lyrical language itself was a treat and almost decadent as confectionary delights; the unique blend of realistic characters—relatives and villagers; often gives the impression the memories collected are as much a novel as they are realistic people reimagined or remembered with a lightness of fictional embellishment and touch. “The Child Poet,” is a family affair for both Homero Aridjis and Chloe Aridjis; as the novel is filled with poetic details, and is riddled with sentimental value, and family legends.

 Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

M. Mary