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Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz
Time-shifting narrative structure that anticipates Quentin Tarantino's filmic stylings; shifts in person that blur the roles of reader and protagonist. Fuentes manages to use first, third, and second person, without overly confusing or aggravating the reader. The shifts in time at first seem random, but as the novel rears to the finish--as expected, Artemio Cruz dies--the death scene is juxtaposed with Cruz's birth, and the narrative comes full circle. Satire, pathos, and lyric description collide in this magnificent work. I'd say much more, but I'll save it for my IB class this coming fall.


Robert Harwell Fiske, The Dimwit's Dictionary
A useful reference, if you have trouble with cliches, stock phrases, or "moribund metaphors." Most helpful are the thesaurus-like recommendations. I hate, loathe, despise the phrase "in terms of," which, in the world of education, gets batted around like a beach ball in a graduation speech. "With some slight thought," Fiske writes, "in terms of can be pared from a sentence." For some, slight thought is tough work.


I'm not just reading novels, though. For your perusal, a fascinating (and brief) article on the intersection of traditionalism and Fascism, and its connection to Islamist movements.

This doesn't mean that all traditionalist belief is fascistic or that its restless quest for lost religious truth is inherently problematic; indeed, much of value has come out of traditionalist examinations of art and religion. But its anti-modern and anti-democratic polemics can have disturbing consequences. And Mr. Sedgwick shows that inscribed in its origins is the belief that truth could only be attained by overturning the modern world and its Western host; moral considerations and human consequences are treated as irrelevant.

Traditionalism declared a war in which modernity itself was the enemy. Only in the total destruction of democratic individualism and liberal humanism could the lost wisdom be restored. In some arenas, that is the battle still being fought.

Go to the source at traditionalists.org.