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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Iconography
The Bridge to Somewhere
Given the subject—Barack Obama—and the author—Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and New Yorker editor David Remnick—it makes sense that Remnick’s new tome, The Bridge (Knopf), would receive...
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Genre Genre Genre
Beats a Full House
I am not au courant with the latest taxonomical view of what was (and still is, I suppose) at one point referred to as the “graphic novel.” Though that rubric...
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Genre Genre Genre
Dutch Treat
If you are not an accidental reader of this whatchamacallit then you are the type of person who is well aware of the new HBO series Treme (which you probably...
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Mi, Mi, Mi, Mi
The Dead Don’t Speak
I suppose I ought not be surprised that entertainment business big macher Jerry Weintraub’s book, When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead: Useful Stories from a...
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New Finds
Change Agents
One wonders what it takes to staunch the hemorrhaging of originality from cultural conversation—in this case, the overuse of Yadda-Yadda-Nation this or Blah-Blah-Planet that? The clichéd title being...
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Coffee Table Gallery
Off the Wall
Siglio Press’s publication of Torture of Women, created by renowned (feminist) artist Nancy Spero, who died in 2009, is the reiteration in well-designed and printed book form of her 1976 creation. ...
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Apropos of Nothing
Happiness Is?
The notion of considering the happiness of the citizenry is not a particularly novel one (think Jeremy Bentham), though the burgeoning of happiness research appears to be a growth industry....
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Serious Fun
Homer Again
One might view tinkering with the Homeric epics a foolish endeavor or a brave effort—in any case, it is not a project lacking in ambition. Young Zachary Mason’s...
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Poetry
The Postman Rings Twice
Perhaps it is inevitable that a giant like the Nobel laureate and Chilean poet Pablo Neruda suffers posthumous paper cuts at the hands of academic scolds such as Ilan Stavans ...
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Writing About Writers
Dirty Laundry
Though I am not convinced that most writers’ lives are particularly interesting, there is no dearth of biographies of writers nor is the supply of new offerings dwindling. There is...
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Apropos of Nothing
New Orleans on My Mind
In my world, the build-up and anticipation for David Simon’s crew’s new creation Treme was hypertensive, culminating with the airing of the first episode on Sunday last. Perhaps...
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Writing About Writers
Tinkers Redux
My personal ambivalence regarding artistic awards and other swimsuit contests (e.g., the Oscars, Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Nobel) is summed up by Pulitzer-winner Gail Caldwell’s observation “that...