Author Archives: Randy Fromm

Reading in a well lit room: Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida

6 July 2008 – 11:38 am

So . . . our first foray off of the Time Magazine list. And one which has some relevance to the book just finished: Atwood’s The Blind Assassin. But, to that in a bit . . .
Barthes is attempting to get at the idea of Photography or the Photograph (capitalized whenever used [...]

Posted in Books, Camera Lucida | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (2)

Blind Readings — an oxymoronic experience

18 May 2008 – 11:11 am

Gerard Genette wrote a book several years back called Paratexts. While I have not waded through the whole thing (yet) I have through other avenues gained some sense of his arguments/ideas. They are core components of literary theory these days, particularly when thinking about texts and reader-response to those texts. Under the [...]

Posted in Books, The Blind Assassin | Tagged , , | Comments (2)

“Shall I Compare Thee . . .”: the Importance of Comparison and Figurative Language

28 December 2007 – 9:19 am

For now, this is all going to be pretty much stream of consciousness. It is a post I have been mulling over since we started the current book—based primarily on the use of simile by our narrator in the first of the novels—but it took on a new sense of solidity when I started [...]

Posted in The Berlin Stories | Comments (1)

“My first impression . . .” and reading the minds of others

9 December 2007 – 5:25 pm

Maybe I am just sensitive to it now, having digested Lisa Zunshine’s book (Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel) and Alan Palmer’s recent paper (”Social Minds“), but I am very aware of the way our narrator “reads” the manifestations of character and motivations and thoughts in the facial expressions and mannerisms [...]

Posted in The Berlin Stories | Comments (2)