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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Little Magazines
Persistently Unusual Subjects
With The Writer's Notebook: Craft Essays From Tin House edited by Lee Montgomery, literary magazine Tin House culls (with a few original exceptions) its Summer Writers Workshop and offers up 17...
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Bookbag
From the Backs of the Racks
The mantle of unacknowledgement falls on many shoulders beyond the poetic brotherhood (and sisterhood): librarians, primary school teachers, booksellers, and so forth. The many small (this description apparently refers to...
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The Coffee Table
It’ll Last Longer
Photography has changed dramatically in the past 20 years--beyond the mutations caused by digital technology. In the '80s, advertising led by fashion and lifestyle products began to look for a...
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Bookbag
Graphic
It was not too long ago (that's in historical time, not 24/7 time) that comics, along with blue jeans and rock and roll, were somehow considered--by anxious parents and the usual...
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Current Reads
Brain and Bones
Shamefully, I must confess that while full of springtime ambition and whatever else is in that season that spurs us to grasp beyond our reach, I had intended to assemble...
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Back Matter
The Duh Vinci Code
As usual, it is the best of times and the worst of times, which is as good a time as any to spin a tale of two novels. Ron Carlson,...
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Current Reads
Taking Woodstock
OK, unlike everyone else in my generation, I was not at Woodstock. (Then and now, not exactly my idea of fun.) But as this week marks the 40th anniversary of...
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Genre Genre Genre
The Simple Art
Californian Richard Lange (Dead Boys) has written a taut, sure-footed walk on L.A.'s wild side with This Wicked World (Little, Brown)--certainly not of the city of angels...
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Current Reads
It’s Gastronomical
Meryl Streep's uncanny film portrayal of Julia Child in Julie & Julia (based on Julie Powell's Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen and Child's My Life in France) has now...
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Bookbag
Under-Appreciated Novels
Before you are deluged with the press release parroting of what I hope are well-meaning literary journalists rushing to present you with the lists of forthcoming books for the fall...
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Back Matter
The Oracular Vidal
Though well represented in print, most recently with Jay Parini's edit of The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal, the oracular Vidal seems glaringly overlooked by the buzzing, blooming noise/newsmakers...
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Back Matter
Rekindled
Given the current overheated media climate, it would be normal to call Nicholson Baker's very thoughtful piece on the Kindle a takedown or bashing--which would be a disservice to journalism ...