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Paterson was born in Dundee, at the eastern edge of Scotland. In the spirit of a troubadour, he began writing poetry while he worked as a jazz musician in London. Since his first book of poetry, “Nil Nil,” Paterson has achieved serious recognition, receiving honors such the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Prize. Most recently, he has received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry...
...writes, “the bright sweep of its radar-arc / is all the human dream / handing us from dark to dark / like a rope over a stream.” One can easily hear the oscillating, swing-like rhythm, and this type of melodic accessibility permeates the entire book...
Although Paterson tends to use older and more traditional verse forms, his book also shows a firm grip on present-day life, displayed in his nonchalant attitude and a variety of witticisms. In the montage-like sequence “Renku: My Last Thirty-five Deaths,” Paterson at times sounds almost too playful to be taken seriously. “If I had a happier dream / this might have been a better poem,” he writes. However, it is precisely this addition of levity that offsets the often overly-sentimental voice that takes precedence...
...constructed and proven, the philosophical novelist revels in the ambiguity of his or her characters, and the conflicting ideas that make up their lives and conversations. Rebecca Goldstein—who has made a career out of presenting philosophical concepts in fictional form—offers with her latest book a showcase of the advantages and frustrations attendant to this curious medium. “36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction” doesn’t settle any of the questions it raises, but it certainly edifies, entertains, and provokes...
Goldstein’s novel flits between two storylines in the life of affable academic Cass Seltzer, one in his present, the other in his past. Presently, Seltzer is contemplating an offer to assume a post at Harvard University, having achieved unexpected fame with his book, “The Varieties of Religious Illusion.” The combination of this secularist tract—and its appendix refuting 36 arguments for God’s existence—with Cass’s clear-eyed empathy for religious belief has turned him into an overnight celebrity, dubbed by Time...