Author Archives: Patrick Lennon

Man in the elements

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Patrick Lennon

The year 2011 marks both the 20th anniversary of the death of the Swiss author Max Frisch, on 4 April 1991, and the 100th anniversary of his birth, on 15 May 1911. I only discovered this by chance when I … Continue reading →

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Letter to Mister H. (or Mister H. Learns To Drive)

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Patrick Lennon

Dear Mister H., I’ve just finished reading your short but dense novel Mercedes-Benz – in the English translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, of course, since I don’t know a word of Polish. Indeed, yours is one of the very few Polish … Continue reading →

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Swayed by endorsements – one way, or another

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Patrick Lennon

I picked up a copy of Joseph O’Neill’s Blood-Dark Track: A Family History (2001) in early 2007. But I really can’t tell you why. I don’t mean that I regret buying it, far from it, but I really don’t know … Continue reading →

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Changing landscapes: Sebald, Parkman, Blackbourn

Posted on April 24, 2011 by Patrick Lennon

There is a passage in W.G. Sebald’s Vertigo in which the narrator regrets the loss of the beautiful view he had once enjoyed from Burg Greifenstein onto the Danube : “A dam has been built below the castle. The course … Continue reading →

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Philip Roth, before he became Philip Roth

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Patrick Lennon

I first read Philip Roth’s second novel, When She Was Good, in March 2000 in this Vintage International paperback edition. It was originally published in 1967 – five years after his first novel, Letting Go (1962). Neither of these books … Continue reading →

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Bruce Chatwin

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Patrick Lennon

The recent publication of Bruce Chatwin’s letters in the volume entitled Under the Sun received subtantial coverage in at least two reviews, both of which also put Chatwin on the cover. The cover of the TLS (29 Oct. 2010) features … Continue reading →

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Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood

Posted on April 10, 2011 by Patrick Lennon

I recently came across this edition of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences, published by Random House. The beautiful cover was designed by S. Neil Fujita. The cover of the 2000 … Continue reading →

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Novels with pictures in them?

Posted on February 20, 2011 by Patrick Lennon

It’s hard to know what to call, well, novels with pictures in them. And yet, the first of these books was, it seems, published in 1892 by the Belgian writer Georges Rodenbach: his Bruges-la-Morte includes 35 pictures, mostly picture postcards … Continue reading →

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