James Hynes (Kings of Infinite Space) is another on a long list of novelists who I have been meaning to read based on excellent and well-rendered notices and a scanning of his occasional journalism. Which give good evidence of a keen intelligence, bristling originality, and a mordant (the best
These days geography has devolved to a chauvinism and regional rivalry not quite as virulent as evidenced in the Balkans and former Yugoslavia. Much of this can be laid at the feet of New York City—that cesspool of ambition, striving, and air-kissing. Who coined that slander on the
Dan Simmons (The Terror) is not only a prolific writer, but his books transverse a multiplicity of genres. His previous opus, The Drood, featured a Charles Dickens charged with defending the reputation of the lost (Arctic) Franklin Expedition from persistent accusations of cannibalism (a story also well handled by Richard
Behind what some readers might consider an audacious, tongue-in-chic title lies a fairly simple thesis about racial taxonomy and historical invention. Historian Nell Irvin Painter’s (Southern History Across the Color Line) new book The History Of White People (WW Norton) argues that “race” is a human contrivance,
If you are attuned to such things, you might note that occasionally the Academy Awards honor one of the motion-picture industry’s faceless, behind-the-scenes people known as producers with an accolade named after Irving Thalberg. Thalberg is something of a Hollywood legend as he was successful at
Two (excellent) reasons to read Francis Wheen’s at times hilarious, other times scary Strange Days Indeed: The 1970’s: The Golden Age of Paranoia (Public Affairs) are Wheen’s mordant humor and high intelligence, and that he is dead on in his assessment of that historical sinkhole known as
Another phrase I am hearing bandied about with some frequency is “national treasure”—I was just listening to Alison Krauss introduce the Fairfield Four as such, and recently Viking Press’s Paul Slovak referred to Rebecca Solnit as a national treasure. So before the phrase becomes a cliché, let me
The phrase “must read” seems to have afflicted the literary critical machinery—which, if it is a barrier to the usual chirpy prose and even worse smarmy pronouncements, may be a tolerable symptom. In the case of New Yorker writer John McPhee (whose writing career began there in 1964), it
To tell the truth, I find many books on reading far too precious. I mean why do I want to read about reading when I can just read?—which I have been doing with gusto most of my life (except for a brief caesura to partake in the exuberance of
Right about now you may be experiencing a distinct feeling of dread and anxiety as you realize that whatever grasp you had of the fundamental principles of governance as expressed in the hallowed document known as the United States Constitution, which you might have mastered in your long-gone years
