February 2010 Archives
-
Iconography
Good Golly, Miss Molly!
Not to name drop or anything but I had the pleasure of “interviewing” (I don’t call my conversations with writers and the like interviews, but that is not what...
-
New Finds
Shop ‘Til You Bop
My temptation to refer to Lee Eisenberg’s (The Number) career as “storied” was tempered by a sudden echo of George Orwell’s famous “Politics and the English Language,” in...
-
Genre Genre Genre
The Eyes and Ears of Texas
Growing up with John Wayne in the movies and Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, Maverick, and the classic Have Gun—Will Travel, I have noted...
-
The Non-Expert
Come On, Sugar, Let Me Know
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week, we reach out to the masses on Chatroulette for advice on sexiness, with horrifying consequences.
-
Iconography
The High Priestess of Soul
There are artists—musicians and actors—who once they take the stage, their power up there is so compelling that for those moments when they are before you, nothing else...
-
The Rooster
Introduction to Nerdhalla
The Tournament of Books is less than two weeks away. As an appetizer, our official ToB Statistician runs six years of numbers on Round 1. Time to download your brackets and place bets.
-
Back in the Day
The Judeophobic Virus
Hebrew University of Jerusalem historian Robert S. Wistrich‘s new tome, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (Random House), is a whale of a book, not...
-
Current Reads
Destination Unknown
I’d be surprised that if you are here reading the results of my keyboard clattering(s) you haven’t somehow heard about The Melting Season (Riverhead) by Jami Attenberg ...
-
Spoofs & Satire
A Pledge to My Readers
As a reader, you have a choice of which books, magazines, and newspapers to consume. I’m committed to bringing you the finest in the written word.
-
Gallery
Going Dutch
Taking inspiration from Dutch vanitas paintings, photographer Justine Reyes creates still lifes from contemporary objects, getting the composition, textures, and colors so precisely “right,” it’s a wonder we’re not seeing some 17th-century Flemish take on contemporary life.
-
Current Reads
Death Be Not Proud
According to pollsters, two thirds of the U.S. population support the death penalty—disregarding racial discrepancies or anomalies in its administration. Interestingly, Texas, where attorney David Dow resides and...
-
Poetry
Come Fly With Them
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins has collaborated with ornithological illustrator par excellence David Allen Sibley to create a sweet little compendium, Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems...
-
Personal Essays
Brief Scenes From Our Marriage
First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the Opposite of Feng Shui. A marriage, told in four parts.
-
Genre Genre Genre
Maltese Vulture
Apparently British author Mark Mills's third novel, The Information Officer (Random House) is something of a departure from his bestselling suspense thrillers, Amagansett and The Savage Garden, else I might...
-
Spoofs & Satire
A Nature Documentary: The Post-Screening Q&A
The film lays bare all the raw intensity of the subject matter, holding back nothing. But some may wonder: What’s the lion’s motivation?
-
New Finds
Irish DNA
There was a time in the mid-’90s when I found myself interviewing a long skein of Roddys, Patricks, Colums, and Seamusi (sic)—I reached the scientifically indefensible but understandable...
-
Announcements
Who is your favorite American President?
Hooray for Presidents! We like our American Presidents, even if we're expats, or not pats at all. Although Lincoln and Washington suffer for having their birthdays too close together--lumping them...
-
New Finds
Which Witch?
Since 2005, Scottish publisher Canongate has been building The Myths, a series of books matching well-regarded authors from all over the globe—Margaret Atwood, Karen Armstrong, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman,...
-
Writing About Writers
The World’s Whisper
In Brigham Young creative writing professor Patrick Madden’s new collection of essays Quotidiana (U of Nebraska Press), we are immediately disabused of equating the ordinary and commonplace with the...
-
Spoofs & Satire
And Now a Few Minutes With Andy Rooney’s Homo Erectus Ancestor
What the kids call “Acheulean,” others call pretentious nonsense. And what’s up with fire?
-
New Finds
Zinn Reads Zinn
When it was first published, who would have expected (least of all Rupert Murdoch, who owns the publishing house) that A People’s History of the United States of America: 149...
-
Coffee Table Gallery
Emptying the Dustbin
Now that the dreary and dismal Bolshevik autocracy has been replaced by a colorful and freewheeling capitalist oligarchy, the artifacts and residue of the Soviet years are likely to be...
-
Gallery
Notes From the Rebuild
Nicole Pasulka and photographer Linda Jaquez visit the St. Bernard Project in New Orleans, and find a neighborhood once devastated by Katrina, now reinvigorated.
-
New York, New York
Hello to All That
Joan Didion once called New York “a city only for the very young.” Moving back to the city at age 33, our writer considers her complaints and comes up optimistic.
-
Genre Genre Genre
Mean Streets
The recent proliferation of Swedish crime writers should not overshadow the cadre of Irish lads who spin these tales as easily as they draw breaths. I’m talking about John...
-
Serious Fun
Playing Ball With Uncle Sam
In case anyone is wondering (as they should) how it is that baseball came to be a significant element in a number of Caribbean national cultures—Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto...
-
The Non-Expert
The Gift That Keeps on Giving
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we advise a reader on what he should buy his girlfriend for their anniversary.
-
Current Reads
When in Rome
British novelist Robert Harris’s (Imperium) second installment in his trilogy of the late Roman Republic, Conspirata: A Novel of Ancient Rome (Simon & Schuster), begins when Cicero becomes Consul of...
-
Back Matter
Ralph Ellison’s Second Novel
You are probably not as confused about the literary legacy of the great Ralph Ellison as I was—when it was published 10 years ago, I thought Juneteenth was the unfinished...
-
Profiles
Out of the Brainland and Into the Heartland
Thomas Jefferson’s heart’s work was to carve out a little Eden on a small mountaintop. Visiting Monticello again and again and again.
-
Iconography
The World According to Self
Will Self (The Butt), the author of six novels, four story collections, three books of novellas, and five works of nonfiction, is also well known for immoderate behavior fueled by...
-
Current Reads
Fun, Stone-Style
Robert Stone, who some commentators credit with being “one of our greatest living authors”—an assertion with which I would not argue—has a new (his second) story collection, Fun...
-
Lunch Poems
Poem Written on the First Anniversary of My Father’s Death
A new poem by the author of Green Squall and winner of the 2005 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award.
-
Back in the Day
Dateline: Berlin, 1948
Richard Reeves, who is best known as a presidential biographer having written reliable and useful monographs on John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan (though my favorite of his oeuvre...
-
Surveys
The Corruptibles
Sitting at our new surveys desk, Mike Deri Smith rounds up the recent trends in global corruption, from Berlusconi to Jersey Shore, to New Yorkers paying rent to the Shah of Iran.
-
Rare Medium
The Long Goodbye
By now it is undoubtedly apparent that I am a devotee of literary magazines in general—and specifically the handful that have been kind enough to add me to their...
-
Gallery
Something Is Happening
With an incredibly detailed eye for life in the 1950s and ‘60s, Erwin Olaf’s photographs offer much more than what’s seen at first glance.
-
Poetry
Grace and Ease
Of the incontestable reasons to choose one book, one song, one painting over another is the caprice of personal preference. There being many worthy poets available to the loquacious commentator,...
-
Coffee Table Gallery
The Private Frank Gehry
Whether Frank Gehry ranks as one of the greatest living architects or not, he is certainly one of the most famous—think the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt...
-
Letters From New Orleans
What It Takes to Make the Sainthood
Saturday is election day. Sunday is the Super Bowl. From Mardi Gras nights to mayoral panels, our writer surveys two big fights in New Orleans to get things right.
-
Current Reads
What Does Money Say When It Talks?
When I first became acquainted with Jonathan Dee back in the mid-’90s, he had two decent novels under his belt—A Lover of History, The Liberty Campaign—and he...
-
Back in the Day
The Hunger Historian
Of the infamous quartet of apocalyptic equestrians, Famine seems to be the least studied or, perhaps more accurately, the least visible. Economic historian Cormac Ó Gráda’s Famine: A Short...
-
Current Reads
The New Patriotism—Huh?
The velocity with which books can be—dare I use the verb “written?”—published these days is astonishing. Barely has a disaster decimated an unfortunate number of humans and their...
-
Spoofs & Satire
The Treatloaf® FAQ
The only thing better than meatloaf is meatloaf with a surprise tucked inside. Common questions about the original mystery meat.
-
Iconography
The High Life
There was a time when people would joke that they read Playboy for the interviews, eschewing any interest in the centerfolds and other decorative editorial. It should be obvious that...
-
Spoofs & Satire
Bringing Home the Bacon
In order to survive in today’s world, you need to make a lot of dough—but a family cannot live by bread alone.
-
Mi, Mi, Mi, Mi
High Fidelity
As a lifelong Cubanophile I was naturally attracted to expatriate Cuban Norberto Fuentes’s new fiction The Autobiography of Fidel Castro (WW Norton), excellently translated by Anna Kushner. And as...
-
Letters From Mumbai
Dosa Data
Having only known American buffets of naan and samosas, Our correspondent’s final dispatch from Mumbai pays tribute to pani puri, a Szechuan Cheese dosa, and the peppered popsicle.
-
Poetry
John Ashbery Turns 25
John Ashbery is not one of my favorite poets, but his longevity and prodigious accomplishments put him in that newly minted category of the “too big to fail.” Having won...
-
New Finds
Apparition Made Real
Short fiction is on my mind today. Michigan mortician turned writer/poet Thomas Lynch (The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade), whose family business most certainly has allowed him...
-
Announcements
Winter 2010 Internship
TMN needs a winter intern for an unpaid internship. You'll work your butt off from home and we'll occasionally shower you with beer. Figure 10 hours a week of research, editing,...
-
Current Reads
Full Bloom
One ought not fault Amy Bloom’s admirers for pushing at the limits of sensible praise as one such does in describing Bloom’s new book, Where the God of...
-
Gallery
Paintings of a Recovering Poet
Ryan Schneider’s work is preoccupied with narrative. Color, texture, and natural imagery become language and through it he records small moments of connection and alienation.