Articles Written By Robert Birnbaum
Robert Birnbaum is editor-at-large at Identity Theory. All the sketchy details of his life will be (re)fabricated in his memoir-in-progress, Just Talking: How to Do Things With Words. His weblog can be found here.
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Apropos of Nothing
The Gutenberg Galaxy
Dwight Garner, who is a devoted book person, reader, and a columnist for the New York Times, has assembled and annotated a compendium of 300 book ballyhoos, entitled Read Me: A...
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New Finds
Distress in Westport
I know novelist Cathleen Schine (The New Yorkers) to be a talented and amusing writer, but somehow I have never been attracted to her stories. Her new novel, The Three...
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Writing About Writers
Conversations With Poets
Pearl London was a beloved teacher and writer at the New School. In 1970, she started to invite guests to her seminar that over 25 years became called “Works in Progress.” Guests...
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Current Reads
Texas Is No. 1
Texas is the punch line to a lot of gallows humor about the American criminal justice system, and my recent note on attorney David Dow’s book, The Autobiography of...
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Coffee Table Gallery
Norman Rockwell’s Evil Twin
For lack of a better metaphor, suffice it to say that visits from my UPS driver and his delivery brethren make almost every day like Christmas at my address. But...
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Back in the Day
The Supremes
Even avid students of American governance and civic-minded people may fall a little short in their understanding of the least accessible branch of the United States national government—I am...
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Poetry
Russian Haiku
Not to worry, I am not going to go crazy on this poetry thing (I don’t think). But I couldn’t get past Russian-born Vera Pavlova’s slender volume,...
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Poetry
National Welding Month
The fact that April is designated National Poetry Month (by what governing body escapes me, though I would not be surprised to learn that the pack of scoundrels in our...
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Rare Medium
Talking the Talk and Walking the Walk
Though I am not an (religiously) observant Jew, I am appreciative and simpatico with various myths and legends and teachings of my people. And I am especially thankful that the...
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New Finds
Writer on the Brink
Such are the caprices of the book world that the intersection of art and commerce occasionally produces interesting distractions and ambiences (sic). Given the Darwinian forces (natural selection?) at play...
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Back Matter
In the Beginning
If it were not for the New York Times’s critic’s resounding advocacy of Ron Rash’s writing, I would most certainly be quibbling with the opening statement: “Ron...
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Current Reads
The Seventh Day
There is an odd reversal of polarities when the notion of resting and setting aside a period of time for a kind of imposed tranquility is considered utopian. But of...