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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Writing About Writers
Strunk & White Exposed
The notion of style is a matter confounding even the most nimble thinkers—so it is, at the least, convenient to have some guideposts in this tricky terrain. And for...
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Back in the Day
People Talk
The unlikely course of historian/activist (or vice versa), Howard Zinn’s subversive (I take that to be a good thing) A People’s History of the United States—first...
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New Finds
Texas Noir
There is already a Tabernacle-size choir singing the praises of Attica Locke’s first novel. Among others, the inestimable James Ellroy and my old pal (I mean that in a...
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Current Reads
You Say Potato, I Say Tuber
This may be a commonplace occurrence—what to do when you read a derogatory review by a writer you admire, of a work by another author you regard highly? It...
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Apropos of Nothing
Oh, Canada?
Amy Goodman, host of the useful and progressive radio program Democracy Now!, has recently published a collection of articles, Breaking the Sound Barrier (Haymarket Books, edited by Denis Moynihan) with...
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Iconography
Pop Goes the Warhol
Speaking of Andy Warhol, I suppose it would be missing the point to complain that the person given credit for the prescient observation that everyone would be allotted fifteen minutes...
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The Coffee Table
Pretty Boys
Reportedly Andy Warhol started Interview Magazine when he was refused press credentials to the (inaugural) 1969 New York Film Festival. Though it began its life as a newsprint quarterfold, by the 198...
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New Finds
A Good Best
There must be some explanation for the fact that it wasn't until 2008 that someone had the clarity of thought to anthologize their well-considered selection of the best writing on the...
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Serious Fun
Accept No Substitutes
Allow me to speculate that if you found your way to this space and stayed on, that you are in no danger of wasting your time reading the latest product...
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The Coffee Table
For Children of All Ages
As the father of an 11-year-old boy, I am ever vigilant for books and other reading materials with which to influence him. Thus, I find my way into areas of...
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Iconography
Good Sports
Typically, sports biographies fall into two categories of uselessness: takedowns (e.g., A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez) or tell-alls (Jose Canseco's Juiced). However, recently there have been a...
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Back in the Day
More From Gore Vidal
Speaking of the incomparable Gore Vidal, his newest book Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History's Glare (Abrams Books) is, if you treasure this sort of thing (which I do), an amazing...