by Jordan Dotson | Jul 17, 2022 | Beautiful Prose
He might have been in a deserted village. We picture the world as thick with conquering and elate humanity, but here, with the bugles of the tempest pealing, it was hard to imagine a peopled earth. One viewed the existence of man then as a marvel, and conceded a... by Jordan Dotson | Apr 4, 2022 | Beautiful Prose
That’s how we lost Khlebnikov. I was very upset about this because Khlebnikov had been a quiet man, very similar to me in character. He was the only one in the squadron who owned a samovar. On days when there was a break in the fighting, the two of us drank hot... by Jordan Dotson | Feb 1, 2022 | Beautiful Prose
The worst of Bath was the number of its plain women. He did not mean to say that there were no pretty women, but the number of the plain was out of all proportion. He had frequently observed, as he walked, that one handsome face would be followed by thirty, or... by Jordan Dotson | May 7, 2021 | Beautiful Prose
Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles. …René Mathis, agent of the French Secret Service in Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale. by Jordan Dotson | Feb 16, 2021 | Beautiful Prose
She was one of those people who was born for the greatness of a single love, for exaggerated hatred, for apocalyptic vengeance, and for the most sublime forms of heroism but she was unable to shape her fate to the dimensions of her amorous vocation, so it was lived... by Jordan Dotson | Jul 8, 2020 | Beautiful Prose, Predicates and commas and whatnot
Thus, in criticizing fiction we must be careful to distinguish those books that satisfy our own particular unconscious needs — the ones that make us say, “I like this book, although I don’t really know why” — from those that satisfy the...