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Table of Contents
- About
August 17, 2010, 15:30
Welcome to BonaLibro. BonaLibro is a community blog site for writers of imaginative literature. Each member has his own URL and is listed on the main blog for…
- Banana Republican Blues
June 5, 2011, 13:31
This mildly dystopian farce concerns the misadventures of a bankrupt plutocrat seeking work in the hospitality trades.
- Privacy Policy
May 28, 2011, 19:03
Welcome to bonalibro.us. We take your privacy seriously; therefore, below we provide you with our privacy policy, where we intend to be transparent about any…
- Site Map
October 5, 2011, 14:33
This page contains the site table of contents. Use it to quickly find content on this website.
- Blog Posts
- Category: Announcements (4)
- Books for Wall Street Occupiers by: admin
October 8, 2011, 22:45
I've begun a new Kickstarter campaign called Books for Occupiers. For each contribution, you will be sent a paperback copy of Banana Republican Blues,…
- New Work in Progress by: admin
June 26, 2011, 13:03
Join the author as he creates a new work of fiction, a genre bending mystery in the grand tradition of literary farce.
- ABNA Semifinal results by: admin
May 16, 2011, 13:04
Moonbeam Highway misses the cut for the semi-final of the ABNA. ABNA Publisher Weekly Reviewer Wall Street wizards, Christian conservatives, and preening…
- ABNA Quarterfinal results by: admin
March 23, 2011, 04:16
I am pleased to announce that Moonbeam Highway made it through to the Quarterfinal round with two very positive reviews from the judges. ABNA Expert…
- Books for Wall Street Occupiers by: admin
- Category: Reviews (5)
- Dogma, by Lars Iyer by: admin
March 7, 2012, 23:03
Lars Iyer is a well known figure of the literary blogosphere, and as a relative neophyte in the space, I only recently came across his name, but liking what I…
- These Dreams of You: A Novel by Steve Erickson by: admin
March 2, 2012, 23:11
Steve Erickson's ninth novel, These Dreams of You, traces the travails of a contemporary American family following their adoption of an Ethiopian child,…
- What Happened to Liberal Democracy? A brief review of two books. by: admin
August 15, 2011, 19:53
Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated and Chris Hedges Death of the Liberal Class
- The Paradox of Feminism in Norman Rush’s Mating. by: admin
May 30, 2011, 21:46
An interesting literary and political paradox.
- by: admin
October 8, 2010, 21:25
In Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster describes three types of reader. The second type, when asked “What does a novel do?” replies: “Why it tells a…
- Dogma, by Lars Iyer by: admin
- Category: Interviews (2)
- Interview with Tim Chambers Author of Banana Republican Blues by: admin
March 10, 2012, 23:07
Where did you get the idea for it? I wanted to write a sort of blues, a story of loss and disappointment that would, nonetheless, be a joy to read. I…
- Interview with Chip Bishop, author of The Lion and the Journalist. by: admin
October 26, 2011, 14:02
The Lion and the Journalist is a new title from Lyons Press. It first in the Fall of 2009 on Authonomy.com. I was the first to spot it and champion it to other…
- Interview with Tim Chambers Author of Banana Republican Blues by: admin
- Category: Commentary (54)
- Do We Need Stories, You Ask? by: admin
March 31, 2012, 22:20
Tim Parks in the New York Review of Books, asks Do We Need Stories? If one starts with the assumption that we read novels merely to see our lives…
- De Niro Says Meant No Offense With First Lady Joke - NYTimes.com by: admin
March 21, 2012, 21:19
De Niro Says Meant No Offense With First Lady Joke - NYTimes.com. Good on De Niro for telling the joke. To me, what it says is that Michelle has been such an…
- Pandering Political Correctness by: admin
March 20, 2012, 14:16
Great American Losers by Elaine Blair | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books. An excellent article on male novelists and how they write for female readers.…
- 'Religious Freedom' Issues and Pederasty in the Catholic Church by: admin
March 9, 2012, 07:27
'Religious Freedom' Issues, Part 2: Catholics and Contraception - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education. I was having it out with one Mavprof, an…
- Reforms for the New Upper Class - Charles Murray - NYTimes.com by: admin
March 8, 2012, 13:43
Reforms for the New Upper Class - NYTimes.com. Charles Murray's proposed solutions to the problems of inequality and upper class advantage are woefully short…
- Renegade — Henry Miller and the Making of ‘Tropic of Cancer.’ — Why do men revel in the degradation of women? by: admin
January 30, 2012, 13:50
Renegade — Henry Miller and the Making of ‘Tropic of Cancer.’ Why do men revel in the degradation of women? Jeannette Winterson's review of…
- Willard "Mittens" Romney is a Plutomaniac by: admin
January 21, 2012, 05:58
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/opinion/brooks-the-wealth-issue.html?ref=opinion When I was a scholarship student in prep school I remember seeing a lower…
- Another Comment Censored by the NYTimes - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com by: admin
January 9, 2012, 18:10
Opportunity Is More Important Than Economic Mobility - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com. As a dogmatist for the Heritage Foundation, your solutions sound like…
- Charlie Rose - Rep. Barney Frank by: admin
January 7, 2012, 20:44
Charlie Rose - Rep. Barney Frank. You really tipped your hand, Mr. Rose, in that fight with the Congressman over the private sector doing it better. The…
- The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value - Forbes by: admin
January 4, 2012, 22:18
The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value - Forbes. As one who has followed the stock market for nearly twenty years, I've been unimpressed…
- Tenure's Dirty Little Secret - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education by: admin
January 4, 2012, 13:07
Tenure's Dirty Little Secret - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education. I notice Milton Greenberg does not refer to the infamous letter of Lewis…
- Comment on David Brooks, Midlife Crisis Economics by: admin
December 28, 2011, 10:43
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/opinion/brooks-midlife-crisis-economics.html The type of big government is exactly the question I would address. The type…
- Comments on Stanley Fish, The Old Order Changeth by: admin
December 28, 2011, 10:40
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/the-old-order-changeth/ The Digital Humanities, come to save us all. What, exactly, are they anyway? The…
- Tax Inequality, Not the Rich? by: admin
December 19, 2011, 15:51
Tax inequality?Ian Ayres of Yale and Aaron Edlin of Berkeley presented an innovative tax proposal in today's NYTimes. To tax inequality is an interesting idea,…
- The New York Times Wouldn't Take My Comment (for twelve hours). by: admin
December 5, 2011, 20:48
As I wrote on Paul Krugman's column today submitted at 11:40 p.m. EST, (I will try and recreate the gist since comments now disappear as soon as they are…
- Obama tells Labor: F*** Y** by: admin
November 29, 2011, 11:34
The Future of the Obama Coalition I suppose it was inevitable that the Jackass party would abandon the last leg of its traditional base in favor of…
- Examining the big lie: How the facts of the economic crisis stack up | The Big Picture by: admin
November 27, 2011, 12:47
In Economics 101, the economics faculties used to trot out the “Tragedy of the Commons” problem to show us how inferior socialism was. The thesis was later…
- Craven Political Crudités - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com by: admin
November 27, 2011, 11:42
Taking issue with another comment, Josiah Wright speaks to a constituency that has largely been left out in this country. It is a constituency of loyal and…
- The Enduring Cult of Kennedy - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com by: admin
November 27, 2011, 11:25
You can say what you like about Kennedy, but he did get the media to shine a spotlight on the great unfinished business of Democracy. I was only eight years…
- The Value of a Well Made Thing. by: admin
November 23, 2011, 07:56
One of the points I make in my book, Banana Republican Blues lies in following passage: Eddie spent his night in jail pondering his situation and composing…
- A Capitalist Muses on Profiting from Communism by: admin
November 15, 2011, 15:47
Wouldn't it be grand if the company could move operations to totalitarian Communist countries where workers are strictly disciplined and wages are suppressed.…
- Comment on The Campaign Jungle - NYTimes 11/13 by: admin
November 13, 2011, 22:05
The Campaign Jungle - NYTimes.com. As the Abramoff interview on 60 Minutes last weekend made quite plain, the corruption has been there for a very long…
- Comment on The Public Editor NYT 11/13 by: admin
November 13, 2011, 20:20
Who Is Occupy Wall Street? - NYTimes.com. Those who view Occupy Wall Street dimly have plenty of venues available to them to make their dim views known. So…
- Comment on Frank Bruni's column 11/13 by: admin
November 13, 2011, 20:18
Gall in High Places - NYTimes.com. Having spent three years in Italy, I think it is safe to say that Berlusconi got away with it because he embodied the…
- Comment on Tom Friedman's Column 11/13 by: admin
November 13, 2011, 20:16
The Last Person - NYTimes.com. India sees itself as a developing country and its people see themselves as having a mission. What that mission seems to be is…
- Comment on Joe Nocera, Teach with the Enemy by: admin
November 8, 2011, 22:19
Joe Nocera, Teaching With the Enemy makes some excellent points about a much maligned institution. Great teachers are rare, but one can encounter them…
- Comment on Deepak Tripathi How Capitalism Flopped by: admin
November 8, 2011, 21:10
How Capitalism Flopped offers a very concise analysis of our present situation. My comment is as follows. Economics 101 teaches us that a shift in the…
- Telling Americans to Vote, or Else - NYTimes.com by: admin
November 6, 2011, 20:03
Telling Americans to Vote, or Else - NYTimes.com. This is one of the best suggestions to come along in a long time. Our political system has too long been…
- The Unintended Consequences of Supply Side Economics. by: admin
November 6, 2011, 09:54
(I posted the following comment on Tom Friedman's Sunday column, Saturday at 8:45 p.m. EST when no comments were showing. At 8:00 a.m. and still no comments…
- On the Firing of General Peter Fuller by: admin
November 5, 2011, 21:47
The firing of General Peter Fuller for remarks he made about Hamid Karzai, shows just how preposterous and deluded is our presence in Afghanistan. Having…
- The NY Times Would Not Take My Comment by: admin
November 5, 2011, 05:56
I submitted the following comment to Paul Krugman's essay, Oligarchy, American Style well within the deadline. It was not accepted. Should I wonder why? Econom…
- Reuters denies me my first amendment rights. by: admin
October 31, 2011, 20:12
Reuters has denied me commenting rights, because of comments such as this. The fact that OWS has not declared a set of demands is what I regard as its…
- Reply to Edward Stille by: admin
October 24, 2011, 15:45
In reply to Edward Stille's New York Times editorial I wrote, "as long as everyone has a chance to compete," is the key phrase in this editorial. We can…
- Reply to Rawls on Wall Street by: admin
October 23, 2011, 11:20
In reply to Steven Mazie's article, Rawls on Wall Street, what "we are the 99%" recognizes is not so much that we are all the same, but that we are all…
- Reply to: Occupy Wall Street Is Being Overhyped by: admin
October 20, 2011, 12:10
In reply to is-occupy-wall-street-being-overhyped I would say that as a teenager who was more interested in traditional culture than the counter-culture, I…
- Bill Keller and Occupy Wall Street by: admin
October 17, 2011, 14:34
Bill Keller's throwaway line dismissal of Occupy Wall Street in today's New York Times irritated me to no end. It's a sign that end times are upon us when…
- Comments on Paul Krugman's "Panic Among the Plutocrats" by: admin
October 10, 2011, 22:16
The New York Times, this morning, would not accept my comment on Paul Krugman's column "Panic of the Plutocrats." When I submitted there were none. A couple…
- Labor and Literature « Commentary Magazine by: admin
September 6, 2011, 21:29
Labor and Literature « Commentary Magazine. The neo-conservative humanist? D.G. Myers, writing in Commentary this week on the subject of Labor Day, says…
- One and Done? - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com by: admin
September 4, 2011, 12:46
Yes, the President would have been wise to throw the game in 2008, but we would have had Hillary in his place. She was lick spittle to Bush his entire…
- Rod Lurie Remakes Peckinpah’s ‘Straw Dogs’ - NYTimes.com by: admin
September 3, 2011, 12:35
Rod Lurie Remakes Peckinpah’s ‘Straw Dogs’ - NYTimes.com. What is the purpose in revisiting the theme of Straw Dogs with a remake? I can think of only…
- Literature Brings the Physical Past to Life - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education by: admin
August 22, 2011, 13:54
An excellent article, Scott. I can remember when I was a teenager, we had a family friend who was getting his doctorate in literature at Yale. We had a…
- Bachmann to Obama: Forget the Debt Ceiling, Lower the Debt, Christian News by: admin
July 30, 2011, 23:18
Commentary on Michelle Bachman's blindness of recent history concerning taxation and deficit spending.
- The Weekend Interview with Bill Gates: Was the Billion Worth It? - WSJ.com by: admin
July 25, 2011, 09:08
The Weekend Interview with Bill Gates: Was the Billion Worth It? - WSJ.com. In this recent article in the Wall Street Journal the writer inserted the…
- On "Wall Street’s Euthanasia of Industry" (Michael Hudson) by: admin
July 20, 2011, 20:48
My take on Michael Hudson's views on Obama
- Mannerism in Literature and the Foxification of the Public Mind by: admin
July 17, 2011, 11:40
An essay on cultural elitism and false populism.
- Stream of Consciousness, Stream of Pee by: admin
July 10, 2011, 20:49
Why I cannot read stream of consciousness literature
- On Krugman: Corporate Cash Con by: admin
July 4, 2011, 15:05
A rant on corporate responsibility.
- Commentary on The Smith Myth « Three Pound Brain by: admin
June 10, 2011, 23:00
the holy trinity of fiction writing
- Comment on SF Signal: The Emptiness of 'Literary Fiction' and the Stereotyping of Genre Literature by: admin
June 10, 2011, 21:42
A literary writer argues addresses the distinction between genres and argues for a new paradigm.
- Rule by Rentiers - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com by: admin
June 10, 2011, 19:31
Rule by Rentiers - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com. Le plus ce que ca change, le plus ce que ces le meme chose. The only thing that will set this country…
- Blowin’ in the Idiot Wind by: admin
April 10, 2011, 00:53
The co-incidence of these two pieces struck me as particularly interesting for what they say about the boomer generation. Blowin’ in the Idiot Wind -…
- The Passing of a Fine Young Writer by: admin
August 13, 2010, 13:51
I was shocked and saddened this evening to learn of the death of a fine young man I knew all too fleetingly on the net. I came across the work of Chris Al…
- Literary Fiction: Dead or Alive?
August 5, 2010, 07:50
Literary Agent Nathan Bransford, poses the the question, "Is Literary fiction losing its place in the culture? In my experience, literary fiction has always…
- Beattie's Book Blog by: admin
August 1, 2010, 08:40
Beattie's Book Blog. On the Booker Prize long-listed book The Slap. "It's also unbelievably misogynistic, and I say that as someone who loves Flashman and…
- Do We Need Stories, You Ask? by: admin
- Category: Features (3)
- New Story Posted - The Fly Show by: admin
April 4, 2012, 11:17
Dante had no circle in hell for aspiring creative hacks, but on Eddie's journey across scorched Earth, he encountered one after another of them... Thus begins…
- Post Financial Crisis Novel by: admin
April 1, 2012, 21:13
Banana Republican Blues is a financial crisis novel concerning to travails and travels of a penniless former hedge fund maven, crossing the country in search…
- New Story Posted - Karma by: admin
March 18, 2012, 13:29
Until Eddie Conover lost his stake, you’d never get a guy like him to believe claptrap like Karma. Watching his old portfolio charts crash as quick as…
- New Story Posted - The Fly Show by: admin
- Category: On Craft (10)
- Hit Lit by: admin
April 11, 2012, 22:52
I just finished reading James Hall's excellent little book on the craft of the novel, Hit Lit. He describes the many elements that bestselling novels share,…
- The Novelist Interviews the Blogger on Lars Iyer by: admin
March 12, 2012, 08:37
You've written a lot about Lars Iyer. What attracted you to his work, and why did you respond to his manifesto? It's so hard to find worthwhile fiction…
- Death of Literature - Nude in Your Hot Tub, Facing the Abyss by: admin
March 8, 2012, 21:50
Nude in your hot tub, facing the abyss (A literary manifesto after the end of Literature and Manifestos) | The White Review. Having written my reader's…
- What Happened to Standards of Excellence? by: admin
January 16, 2012, 19:41
I'm all for raising standards of excellence, in ethics, politics, morals, education. Especially standards of excellence in writing, which is what I attempt to…
- Comments Please. by: admin
January 13, 2012, 21:59
Here is a paragraph I recently wrote into my novel. What say you all? Is it a darling that needs to be killed, or kept? In the darkest part of his heart he…
- What is Meant by the Writer's Voice? by: admin
July 31, 2011, 23:05
On voice in literary fiction.
- On Point of View by: admin
May 28, 2011, 22:58
Believing that limited choices foster creativity, I decided to tell my entire tale from single character's point of view. Using the illeistic third, rather…
- More on "Mating." by: admin
May 12, 2011, 12:29
Norman Rush's 'Mating' sends my BS detector soaring. A sure sign of amateurism in fiction is the info dump, in which the author loads the reader up with…
- Thoughts on Norman Rush's "Mating" by: admin
May 2, 2011, 12:10
I've been reading Norman Rush's Mating, a national book award winner, and for a book that purports to be so learned, this passage in particular struck me as…
- The Great Canards of Creative Writing by: admin
September 29, 2010, 07:27
Write What You Know Having read reams of online slush, I have labored through numerous manuscripts that give the lie to the principle of Write What You…
- Hit Lit by: admin
- Category: The Writing Process (5)
In which an obscure novelist writes about the thinking behind his work.
- Rewriting Again. by: admin
March 31, 2012, 20:49
One of the issues that prompted my decision to rewrite BRB again was my short story, Karma, which used the characters from the novel. I adapted it for…
- The Death of Literature - Replying to Lars Iyer's Manifesto by: admin
March 10, 2012, 11:12
Nude in your hot tub, facing the abyss (A literary manifesto after the end of Literature and Manifestos) | The White Review. Ever since I was a kid in high…
- Done. But is it Literature? by: admin
January 15, 2012, 17:59
I feel like I've finally finished my novel, Banana Republican Blues. The aim was always to write a farce that would pass as Literature. I've been…
- Comments Please. by: admin
January 13, 2012, 21:59
Here is a paragraph I recently wrote into my novel. What say you all? Is it a darling that needs to be killed, or kept? In the darkest part of his heart he…
- To Plot or Not to Plot | The Art & Craft of Writing Creatively by: admin
June 6, 2011, 19:33
In response to the following post from Terri Giuliano Long, I've always felt I did my best work when either writing in a creative frenzy or writing to discover…
- Rewriting Again. by: admin
- Category: Announcements (4)
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