Rohan Maitzen Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

Rohan Maitzen

"And it came to him then that it should never be taken lightly, the essential loneliness of people, that the choices they made to keep themselves from that gaping darkness were choices that required respect." - Elizabeth Strout, "Olive, Again"

Rohan Maitzen

"Writing is, after all, what a writer does": it's interesting for me now to look back on my 2007 post about Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. https://t.co/5Cen0SLEPc

Rohan Maitzen

@benjamin_oc Maybe not your kind of thing but Dorothy Dunnett’s King Hereafter is extraordinary.

Rohan Maitzen

“So many pages, and I never got to liking any of the characters”: ⁦@nonnecromancer⁩ on Crossroads, by Jonathan Franzen https://necromancyneverpays.wordpress.com/2021/11/06/crossroads-jonathan-franzen/

Rohan Maitzen

I first encountered this poem in Carolyn Heilbrun's The Last Gift of Time. I was right that it has lingered with me since. https://t.co/nx8QH3spz0

Rohan Maitzen

"Pain must enter into the glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion." - George Eliot, Middlemarch

Rohan Maitzen

"When the enemy has gone, and there's nothing left but those who are left. Desolation. Empty cupboards. Photos that freeze her in childhood. All the others growing, even the trees, even the flowers, without her." - Valérie Perrin, Fresh Water For Flowers

Rohan Maitzen

"Her mouth was too heavy with lipstick, a copper-red mouth, a sultry mouth painted to call attention to its premise." - Dorothy B. Hughes, In A Lonely Place Tomorrow one of our class topics will be whether Hughes manages to represent misogynistic tropes w/o reproducing them.

Rohan Maitzen

I put together some thoughts about Sally Rooney's BEAUTIFUL WORLD, WHERE ARE YOU, which answers its own self-reflexive critique of "sensitive little novels of 'ordinary life'" by asserting the value of both novels and ordinary life. https://rohanmaitzen.com/2021/10/27/beneath-the-surface-sally-rooney-beautiful-world-where-are-you/

Rohan Maitzen

@BobEaglestone I think Amanda Claybaugh's The Novel of Purpose is very insightful and it has a wide range. https://t.co/pV5vFqty8B