By Bob Hicks
Hal Holbrook’s back in town on Saturday, riding the horse of his magnificent one-man show Mark Twain Tonight!, and even as Holbrook noses up on 87 years old it’s bound to be a helluva show.
A couple of weeks ago I chatted on the phone for about an hour with him (Holbrook, not Twain, [...]
By Bob Hicks
In Down the rabbit hole: Melody Owen makes a book, which is new on Oregon Arts Watch, I tell the tale of … well, of Melody Owen making a book. Actually, it’s more about the publication party for the Portland artist’s new book, Looking Glass Book, at Publication Studio, in a tuckaway corner [...]
By Bob Hicks
What’s been cooking lately in the Scatter kitchen? Well, a lovely baked dressing made up mostly of mushrooms, celery, onions and leftover bread slices (Mrs. Scatter’s clean-out-the-fridge creation). And another batch of baklazhannia ikra, or “poor man’s caviar,” an addictive eggplant/tomato/onion/pepper relish that William Grimes discovered recently in one of those great old [...]
“By and large, time moves with merciful slowness in the old-fashioned world of writing. … (T)he rhythms of readers are leisurely. They spread recommendations by word of mouth and ‘get around’ to titles and authors years after making a mental note of them. … A movie has a few weeks to find an audience, and [...]
By Bob Hicks
Someone called Singlet, responding online to the obituary in The Guardian for the novelist and children’s writer Russell Hoban, had this to say: “A few comments that Hoban’s other novels don’t come close to Riddley Walker make me think of what Joseph Heller reportedly said when asked, ‘Why have you never written anything [...]
By Laura Grimes
Book Club was great fun.
After I wrote my last post, a book clubber discovered it and broadcast it to the rest of the group. Then the email trail went eerily quiet. This is not a quiet email group. It’s not overly communicative, but the stillness was … worrisome. Were [...]
By Laura Grimes
Book Club is coming. Book Club is coming.
And it’s coming to my house.
I never thought I was a Book Club person. I love the idea of a gathering of people for the primary reason of discussing a book, but I chafe at the thought of being told what to read, spending [...]
By Bob Hicks
So this is the way it gets.
Lying in bed awake
at 3:17 a.m.
my wife’s heavy breathing
the weight of the dog on my leg
I am visited by the ghosts
of past mistakes
and dance to a symphony
of regrets
I wouldn’t change a thing
This is who I am
counting my blessings
in the dark morning
That’s Portland writer Charles Deemer’s poem The [...]
By Martha Ullman West
I have had an addiction to detective stories (and coffee, I confess) since I was fourteen years old, when I read Agatha Christie late into the night, using a flashlight, in my dormitory room at the Quaker boarding school I loved.
We sometimes had interesting vespers speakers on Sunday [...]
25 candles for First Thursday
BodyVox leans horizontally
William Hurt and Harold Pinter duke it out
Wordstock throws a bookapalooza
Oregon Arts Watch puts on a show (times three)
A double feature at Oregon Ballet Theatre
Portland Open Studios’ peek behind the scenes
By Bob Hicks
Good lord, what a weekend. Used to be, a person who really tried could actually keep up [...]