John Baker’s Blog

A taster:
I had in a drawer an illuminated parchment on which was written in elegant characters that on Primo Levi, of the Jewish race, had been conferred a degree in Chemistry summa cum laude. It was therefore a dubious document, half glory and half derison, half absolution and half condemnation. It had remained in that [...]

Although originally published as a series of short stories, Go Down Moses is, in fact, a novel. Like much of Faulkner’s work, it deals with issues of slavery and race, the relationship between man and his environment, stewardship and ownership of land, the vanishing wilderness, and property and inheritance.
The novel plays with the concept of [...]

Ernest Hemingway called Mark Twain’s book: The beginning of modern American literature.
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn . . . But it’s the best book we’ve had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.
Norman Mailer: The [...]