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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Book Digest: July 9, 2007
Here’s some inside baseball on big-time journalism’s favorite default mechanism to fill space or air in the event of a slow news day or a lack of imagination:...
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Book Digest: July 2, 2007
From a Paris Review interview published in 1977, here’s Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. on patriotism: Interviewer: You are a veteran of the Second World War? Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: Yes. I want...
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Book Digest: June 25, 2007
The New York Times Book Review—my favorite literary whipping boy—is much in my mind right now as 1) Dan Simon, publisher of the skewered-by-universal-scold Walter Kirn, The People’s...
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Book Digest: June 18, 2007
May I say that I am bored—of course, I may!—with literary reviewers, some intelligent and useful (Adam Kirsch), some Paleolithic (Richard Schickel), offering undisguised special pleading as to...
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Book Digest: June 4, 2007
Recently, the world of literary fiction was preoccupied with the diminishment of review space in American newspapers, with various (self-) interested parties weighing in. The New York Times stepped into...
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Book Digest: May 21, 2007
My buddy Howard and I were involved in a somewhat heated dispute over recent remarks in this space suggesting the pantheon of iconic American painters was in his words, “small...
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Book Digest: May 14, 2007
Last week I noted Christopher Hitchens’s new book, God Is Not Great, and my own disinterest in the book’s subject, but certainly not its author. This week Michael...
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Book Digest: May 7, 2007
The recent brouhaha regarding the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s decision to downsize by eliminating the book editor’s position (currently held by the well-regarded Teresa Weaver) is a curious thing. It...
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Birnbaum v.
Colum McCann
Transplanted Irishman Colum McCann has just finished a ramble with Gypsies in his newest novel, Zoli. A conversation about the Romany people, the perils of writing novels tied to history, and more.
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Book Digest: April 23, 2007
I should warn you that of all the events of the past month (besides the commencement of the 2007 Major League Baseball season) Kurt Vonnegut’s passing sticks with me most—...
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Book Digest: April 16, 2007
The chattering and clattering classes are preparing for PEN’s World Voices fest coming soon to Manhattan. Me, I was in Cambridge, Mass., stumbling around the Bryn Mawr Bookstore, and...
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Book Digest: April 9, 2007
I know I belabor expressing my animus to many literary and artistic awards. I must therefore point out those I find useful, such as the IMPAC/Dublin Award (an international...