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On The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) by Mark Twain. Hints of Tom’s Suspect Character
Mark Twain gives hints of Tom Sawyer’s suspect character. They can be read comically at first glance, but this will come around again in a sad way in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 1. He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though—and loathed him. – Page 5 Continue reading
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On the first episode of HBO’s The Last of Us
It presents itself to us as an epic. We know this from the trailer & from the reputation of the video game. We’re going to see a journey (backpacks filled) of heroes, and the fate of all humanity dangles. We are situated in the enclosed space of the Quarantine Zone (QZ) in Boston. Here we Continue reading
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Words I had to look up while reading The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
Dictionary, keep close. Like any Joycean writer, Joshua Cohen twists words to make them his own. scrofulated This is not a real word, so when you google it, one of the first 10 results is an article about The Netanyahus. Scrofulous is a word. Of, related to, or suffering from scrofula. Or unkempt. Or morally Continue reading
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The Philco “Miss America” TV from The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
The TV was new, just purchased. I’d never have sprung for so lavish a gift if I hadn’t been so weak. It was a gift for all of us, from all of us, together. This was what I’d told myself: we needed some laughter in the house, we needed something bright, and the newest models Continue reading
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My Five Favorite Reads of the Year
My tracker tells me I started 70 books this year and finished 30. The 30 include several re-reads. The five books I’m recommending here are first time reads that I finished this year. So, no Solenoid for now, since I haven’t finished it yet. No Moby-Dick since I’ve read it before. No particular order here Continue reading
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Twenty Years.
It was mainly, knowing that his father, too, felt a particular kind of contentment, here, unlike any other, and that their kinds of contentment were much alike, and depended on each other. James Agee, A Death in the Family You cannot retrospectively disguise yourself as a child. To yourself. I cannot. It would be better Continue reading
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Let’s be still.
Moreover, to go back to my thesis that life has a varying offensive, the realization of having cracked was not simultaneous with a blow, but with a reprieve. Fitzgerald, The Crack-up Listening to the rain dripping from trees. The later at night the better. Or sometimes my mother will post something about gratitude, nothing witty Continue reading
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Things I Had to Look Up While Reading This Week (Nabokov, Hawkes, O’Connor)
I should know these, I know. I know. virago (noun) a loud-voiced, ill-tempered, scolding woman. From Nabokov’s Mary. Chapter Two. In a haphazard way she cleaned the rooms herself, but she had never been able to cope with food, so she kept a cook—the terror of the local market, a vast red-haired virago who on Continue reading
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Four Terrifying Screenshots from Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings (1978)
As a young child, this film was my introduction to the world of JRR Tolkien. Some of the shots terrified me. Truly. Here are some snippets of Ralph Bakshi talking about his film in 1978. “The question then comes up that if you’re not going to be cartoony, why animate? I think it’s the same Continue reading
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Newspaper Account of the Murder of Wild Bill Hickok
From The Black Hills Weekly Pioneer, 05 August 1876. Newspapers dot com link here. The murderer, Jack McCall, was captured after a lively chase by many of our citizens, and taken to a building at the lower end of the city and a guard placed over him. As soon as this was accomplished a coroner’s Continue reading
About Talking Big
All posts by Jay Innis Murray.
Always on the lookout for new books to review. Please drop me a line at grashupfer@gmail.com or say hi on Twitter, Mastodon or Blue Sky.
Read my novel here: https://tinyurl.com/p98jtu7c
Recent Posts
- A Review of The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers
- Stealing Einstein’s Underpants – A Review of The Delegation (2025) by Avner Landes
- A Review of On the Calculation of Volume 1 (2024) by Solvej Balle
- A Review of The Cannibal Owl (2025) by Aaron Gwyn
- A Review of Every Arc Bends Its Radian (2024) by Sergio De La Pava
Talking Big 