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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Bookbag
Acolytes of Gutenberg
Every year end I stew in my own vexation as we’re bombarded by various cultural gatekeepers’ lists of the top/best/sexiest/favorite/hottest/most important books of the...
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Back in the Day
Founding Fathers, Sisters, and Cousins
Thankfully, due to the efforts of people like historians Howard Zinn, Sean Willentz, Ray Raphael, and others, the historical revisionism that views American history from the bottom up—so-called people’...
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Current Reads
A Boston Whodunnit
Boston, which has variously proclaimed itself the Athens of America and The Hub of the Universe, counts in its history a number of events well known to non-residents, most of...
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Coffee Table Gallery
Fair Fowl
I may have to amend my recent claim that I am sparing in the use of the superlative ‘amazing’ if I continue to discover books such as Andrew Zuckerman’s...
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Iconography
When Newspapers Were Newspapers
The death of the great caricaturist David Levine reminded me of another great artist, political cartoonist Herb Block (better known as Herblock). Herblock, whose career spanned 70 years and four Pulitzer...
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Birnbaum v.
Michael Ondaatje
Our man in Boston talks to Michael Ondaatje about why he writes novels, how he measures satisfaction, and when fiction can succeed by operating like poetry.
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Current Reads
Straight to the Heart
No doubt my fondness for the geography of my youth (Chicago and neighboring Big 10 states) has contributed to my sensitivity to regional chauvinism—who coined the phrase “flyover zone” anyway?...
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New Finds
The Good, The Bad, The Funny
If he never published another book, music commentator and cultural historian David Hadju most certainly made his bones with Lush Life, his incomparable biography of the great Duke Ellington collaborator,...
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Little Magazines
Small But Persistent
Visitors to this (so to speak) space are aware of my fondness for periodical literature and “small” magazines in particular. One I pay attention to is Glimmertrain, a literary quarterly...
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Current Reads
Master of the Novella
Jim Harrison’s screenplays and almost 30 books, including 15 of fiction (in his own reckoning, he is first and foremost a poet, and also a wonderful food commentator) have firmly fixed...
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Bookbag
Readings Redux
The Washington Post’s Jonathan Yardley is a useful and valuable commentator on books and culture, whose good work stands out in an increasingly degraded enterprise (the reviewing of books...
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Iconography
A Mighty, Mighty Pen
Last summer I had occasion to comment on caricaturist David Levine’s most recent tome collecting his assorted drawings of American presidents. Sadly, Levine succumbed to prostate cancer over the...