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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Genre Genre Genre
Heroes and Villains
Dan Simmons (The Terror) is not only a prolific writer, but his books transverse a multiplicity of genres. His previous opus, The Drood, featured a Charles Dickens charged with defending...
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Back in the Day
The Souls of White Folk
Behind what some readers might consider an audacious, tongue-in-chic title lies a fairly simple thesis about racial taxonomy and historical invention. Historian Nell Irvin Painter’s (Southern History Across the...
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Iconography
The Producer
If you are attuned to such things, you might note that occasionally the Academy Awards honor one of the motion-picture industry’s faceless, behind-the-scenes people known as producers with an...
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Serious Fun
Counting Back the Years
Two (excellent) reasons to read Francis Wheen’s at times hilarious, other times scary Strange Days Indeed: The 1970’s: The Golden Age of Paranoia (Public Affairs) are Wheen’s mordant...
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Mi, Mi, Mi, Mi
Another National Treasure
Another phrase I am hearing bandied about with some frequency is “national treasure”—I was just listening to Alison Krauss introduce the Fairfield Four as such, and recently Viking Press’...
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Current Reads
New McPhee
The phrase “must read” seems to have afflicted the literary critical machinery—which, if it is a barrier to the usual chirpy prose and even worse smarmy pronouncements, may be...
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Bookbag
Manguel on Reading
To tell the truth, I find many books on reading far too precious. I mean why do I want to read about reading when I can just read?—which I...
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Back in the Day
Dummies’ Guides for U.S.
Right about now you may be experiencing a distinct feeling of dread and anxiety as you realize that whatever grasp you had of the fundamental principles of governance as expressed...
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The Coffee Table
By the Book
There is in the life of the collector a dialectical tension between the poles of disorder and order. Naturally, his existence is tied to many other things as well: to...
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Iconography
No Eyes on the Prize
There are some people who believe Alfred Nobel and Joseph Pulitzer are better known for the prizes that bear their names than their places in history. Such an optimistic claim...
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Apropos of Nothing
Double Dutch
Like many Americans, despite a nagging sense of better judgment and the guilt that follows from ignoring that judgment, I succumbed to unseen societal forces and purchased one of those...
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Coffee Table Gallery
Where We Are
Before the literary landscape became littered with all types of annuals entitled Best American This or That, or simply Best Blah Blah Blah 20__, I would look forward to what I...