Peter Thompson Books
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Novels, poetry, translations,
French and Third World lives,
North Africa a specialty
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The Rhodes-to-Hell blog
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Don't be like Mallarmé,
"The flesh is ad, alas, and Ive read all the books..."
Don't be like Mallarmé:
"The flesh is weak, alas, and I've read all the books..."
Read as if words were wine!
Portfolio of Work
Sections are: poetry, novels, translations (of both genres), anthologies, Ezra journal of translation
The anthologies
Négritude et nouveaux mondes is a poetry anthology of African and Caribbean work. Study questions and vocabulary help are included. Lengthy introductions help with the context of the Négritude movement, as do biographies of all the writers.
Littérature moderne du monde francophone contains poetry, prose and theater, with writers sourced from the entire world. Study questions and vocabulary exercises included. Works of varying difficulty. A McGraw-Hill book for many years.
Philosophy and Literature is a 600 page anthology of poetry and short stories, with essays by philosophers from Plato to Sartre. Chiefly edited by the philosopher Cameron Thompson. In print for 30 years (originally with Harcourt Brace), suitable for college or high school students. Many extensive introductions (including to every philosopher) and biographies.
Novels: The Harrison Rhodes trilogy. The beleaguered anti-hero of the academic world, a funny and feckless rebel.
You don't have to have gone to a prep school, much less a hellish, second-rate boarding school, to get the ambivalence, violent yearnings and escapism of these novels. Tales told with biting humor, and a main character who, in the end, gains your sympathy.
The fourth novel finds him teaching in Morocco. A dire plot and lots of local color.
The prequel, Bughouse Blues:
"The old vets, thinking back to those days, guys like Live-Free Lenny, would gaze wistfully through the unmeshed windows of the nursing station upon the tail of their lives fleet in the evening sky, and get moist-eyed describing the special shrill tone of the wards back then, before the advent of psychotropic drugs."
Poetry
The Angle of Incidence and Shades are two books published as one. Diálogos Books, 2012.
~~The first is ekphrastic, treating about 50 modern paintings
~The second is about ghosts, with a good many of these materializing in Europe, Africa,
South America
Translations
With one exception, the translations are from North African and sub-Saharan works (from the French). In many cases they are the only translations of the author. Most have useful introductions.
If If you're the geek who thinks
great literature can't
be translated, get off my
dang website!
I
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"The original is unfaithful to the translation."
Borges
Blog
Contact: Peter Thompson (Peter S., of Rhode Island--imposters abound) -- pthompson@rwu.edu
Several publishers, all with websites, plus amazon etc
Rhodes-to-Hell blog
This is the Harrison Rhodes humor blog, curated by yours truly, fed by Harrison's occasional eruptions and appearances from abroad.
It is three things: SEETHING UNREST, (his and yours too, right?) indignation at the state of humanity; his TWISTED HUMOR, a thin, twanging life-line not to sanity but to simply carrying on; bits of his PALLIATIVE PHILOSOPHY.
The blog is a clue to--and is illuminated by--his novels, Winter Light, Harrison's Word, Rhodes To Morocco and Bughouse Blues. The latter is a prequel, if you want his harrowing tale in proper order.