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
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...
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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...
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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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Now that the dreary and dismal Bolshevik autocracy has been replaced by a colorful and freewheeling capitalist oligarchy, the artifacts and residue of the Soviet years are likely to be...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...