As I have pointed out somewhere else, the intellectual dustup surrounding the varied reception of Muslim thinkers Tariq Ramadan and Hirsi Ali, mentioned in Paul Berman’s The Flight of Intellectuals, has taken place mostly in the rarified heights of our smarter periodicals. Carlin Romano has his say, commending Berman
Reading Agni editor and Harvard mentor (The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age) Sven Birkets at his best is like listening to an old-style baritone crooner like Johnny Hartmann squeeze every last nuance from a classic ballad. The occasion for this observation is Birket’s meditation
Arguably there are two sure-fire subjects that will get you a book contract: the current (everlasting) educational crisis and depression. And if you are a discerning reader (which, for the purposes of this small discussion, is one who is not enthralled by self-helping snake oil hucksters) interested in the subject,
In the last decade of the 20th century, Vanity Fair—in what no doubt was a well-intended nod to the rising tide of Spanish-language and Latino literature—fabricated “Las Girlfriends,” a group portrait of authors Julia Alvarez, Ana Castillo, Denise Chavez, and Sandra Cisneros. (I have since forgotten—probably with
