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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Reading
The Dawn Patrol
I suspect that Don Winslow will never write a book that grabbed me as much as his epic thriller The Power of the Dog, but that won’t stop me...
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Reading
What Amy Bloom’s Been Reading
Amy Bloom responds to my query about her current reading: I’m trying to read books by living people but because I’m in the midst of writing I incline...
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Reading
Book Digest: May 19, 2008
Darin Strauss, whose third opus, More Than It Hurts You, will enter the literary fray soon, weighs in on his latest reading: I’m reading The Journals of John Cheever....
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Reading
Book Digest: May 12, 2008
Elizabeth Strout, whose latest opus, Olive Kitteridge, is garnering well-deserved reviews, writes: I have been reading Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, the heartbreaking, gorgeously told story of...
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Reading
Book Digest: May 5, 2008
Sigrid Nunez, whose novels I have enjoyed and admired, responds to my inquiry about what she’s been reading lately: “I’ve been asked to teach a literature seminar in...
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Reading
Book Digest: April 28, 2008
Joan Frank, whose first novel Miss Kansas City I reviewed for the San Francisco Chronicle, responded to my query about what she is reading: I’ve been reading Twenty-Eight Artists...
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Reading
Book Digest: April 21, 2008
Having had reason to contemplate philosopher/titan Ludwig Wittgenstein, (see below) I thought I would lay out a few hors d’oeuvres of his thinking. From his so-called early phase: ...
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Reading
Book Digest: April 14, 2008
Susanna Moore (In the Cut and Big Girls) shares her current reading with you and me: I am reading Blood Meridian (by Cormac McCarthy) for the third time and as...
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Reading
Book Digest: April 7, 2008
As a literary journalist, I hang on to the notion that the universe of literature encompasses more than words and stories—think of the business of publishing, the cranks and...
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Birnbaum v.
Chip Kidd
The estimable Chip Kidd, designer of books’ fronts, backs, and spines, chats with our man in Boston about what it’s like to work on the words that come in between.
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Reading
Book Digest: March 31, 2008
From the pen of Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck: A book is like a man—clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be...
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Reading
Book Digest: March 24, 2008
It is not yet clear to me whether Nicholson Baker’s amazing and brave new book, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, will have...