by Rick Skwiot
March 10, 2011
Books
Author, speaker and therapist Jerry Waxler recently interviewed me at length for his Memory Writers Network blog about my new book, “San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: Memoir of a Sensual Quest for Spiritual Healing.” In the interview I discuss the process and art of memoir writing, which I hope may be of interest to readers and writers alike. [...]
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by Rick Skwiot
February 14, 2011
Books
In Ian Frazier’s hefty new Travels in Siberia, one comes to feel affection for the Russians struggling there, if not the author. But the real protagonist of this travel book/history/memoir is the land itself. As Frazier demonstrates, its vastness, riches, hard history, and potential future are hard to grasp. The people who inhabit Siberia, whom [...]
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Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom:” boring, juvenile and insignificant, or an American masterpiece?
by Rick Skwiot January 1, 2011 BooksHaving just previously blogged about B.R. Myers’ A Reader’s Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose, first penned some ten years ago, I was curious what he had to say about today’s novels. I found Myers’ scathing review of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom in The Atlantic (October 18). Myers characterizes the novel as “a 576-page monument [...]