Tag Archives: Fiction

Inside Drabble’s developer

Posted on May 3, 2017 by David Brussat

Margaret Drabble’s 1977 novel The Ice Age is supposedly about Britain and its existential angst during the ’60s and ’70s, but I just started reading it. For a few pages near the outset, at least, it concerns the career of … Continue reading →

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Musical skyscrapers afloat

Posted on June 29, 2016 by David Brussat

Here is a passage from The Nutmeg of Consolation, the 14th volume of Patrick O’Brian’s 20-volume naval novel, set in the Napoleonic era. Capt. Jack Aubrey and his surgeon friend Dr. Stephen Maturin, one evening in the South China Sea, … Continue reading →

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Renovating Castle Lyndon

Posted on February 23, 2016 by David Brussat

Here is a set of passages from William Makepeace Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon, which I am reading for the first time after seeing the movie, directed by Stanley Kubrick in a sort of cinematic slo-mo. The novel is an extended exercise … Continue reading →

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What is architecture about?

Posted on November 25, 2015 by David Brussat

Stephen Fry, celebrated British actor and humorist best known on this side of the pond for his portrayal of Jeeves, manservant to Bertie Wooster in the TV series Jeeves and Wooster, published his first novel, Liar, in 1991, which also … Continue reading →

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Kingsley Amis bags a statue

Posted on August 12, 2015 by David Brussat

The late Kingsley Amis wrote The Old Devils (1988) about a community of old art farts in Wales when one of their old school chums, “media Welshman” Alun Weaver, decides to end his long successful literary career in London and … Continue reading →

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The dark caverns of history

Posted on July 26, 2015 by David Brussat

About halfway through Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery I have not stumbled, so far, upon the travelogue sequences I promised to record for readers. But the book has brought us down into the darkest caverns of history, spiced further by … Continue reading →

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A high-rise schimflexicon

Posted on July 6, 2015 by David Brussat

H.L. Mencken assembled and published Menckeniana: A Schimflexicon, in which he collected all the abuse of his writing that he could find, mostly from newspaper reviews of his books. I have set myself a much easier but less amusing task … Continue reading →

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Ben Deaver wakes up

Posted on August 15, 2014 by David Brussat

Here is a passage from the latest novel, A History of the Future, in Jim Kunstler’s World Made by Hand trilogy – he is working on making it into a quartet. The novels take place a few years after some … Continue reading →

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‘World Made By Hand’

Posted on July 31, 2014 by David Brussat

My column about Don Powers’ presentation at Boston’s Traditional Building Conference a couple of weeks ago, which comes amid a lengthy set of threads about real or fake building materials on the TradArch listserv, reminded Steve Mouzon (who also spoke) … Continue reading →

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Ignore Rem Kookhouse

Posted on February 22, 2014 by David Brussat

Rem Kookhouse. That is his Dutch name translated into English. In my last post I took a leap of faith and landed, well, awkwardly to say the least. I urged readers to consume an interview of Rem by Andrew Mackenzie … Continue reading →

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