Endowed with modest talents, I have found it good practice to follow in the footsteps of giants. So in talking and writing (which is talking on the page) about books, I follow Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska’s lead. In her tome (which I recommend to anyone who presumes to be
I am not a literary statistician or demographer, and am thus unqualified to assess how many women writers’ books the New York Times reviews as opposed to white men writers. And I couldn’t say what kind of review attention Algonquin Press’s wonderful story annual New Stories from the
This is the time of year when football, America’s Game, the most insidious video game of all, overtakes large parts of the country’s population, most of whom fall into the classification known as human tubers—ostensibly sentient beings almost totally unaware of what is required to play this
James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency and proprietor of the delightful web journal Clusterfuck Nation, is probably—based on his views of the oil peak, suburbia, and America’s gimme-something-for-nothing ethos—viewed as a kook, mountebank, or whatever is currently the worst thing to be (Muslim? gyspsy/Roma?
Apparently there’s been keening by a number of white women writers that the New York Times disproportionately touts white males—in this case, Jonathan Franzen and his new opus Freedom received some attention (disproportionate to the relevance of their complaints) here and there. Personally, I might have taken the
Reading a Guardian article headlined “Jodi Picoult attacks favoritism towards ‘white male literary darlings’—Bestselling author attacks New York Times for narrow focus of its review coverage” had me checking to ascertain that I wasn’t somehow shanghaied and thrown back into the 20th century via a time machine. That
Perhaps future anthropologists, stirring the entrails of our American civilization, will find it remarkable that in the third millennium of the Christian era, Time magazine placed novelist Jonathan Franzen on its cover. What I find remarkable is that anyone thinks the dying gasps of an endangered media species are news
Last week’s version of this bulletin included notice of Tony Judt’s latest opus. Sadly, this week’s news is that Judt has passed on, as some express it, to his greater glory. Here’s the New York Timesobituary. My colleague Mike Smith at this fortress of truth and
More than a few people have expressed to me some inchoate feeling that, yes, August is upon us. This seems to be an expression of discomfort with the rapidity with which the current season is falling away. And in my view, a minor symptom of a larger distemper which is,
Inquire of any observer within reasonable proximity of his or her wits and I doubt any would say that last week represented a hopeful moment in the life of our ailing republic. You, of course, already know the other symptoms—imperialistic hubris run amuck; “too big to fail” capitalist hyenas
Not being a statistician, I am not offering this as a fact, but my sense is that there are more short story collections being published than ever. And given the distortions of time that obtain in our enveloping warp-speed world, one would think that short fiction would be the preferred
The notion that insanity is the only rational response to a mad and maddening world—a notion romantically articulated by exotic psychiatric adventurer and trailblazer R.D. Laing in the euphoric phase of the Vietnam War era (“Insanity: a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world”)—still holds some allure
Having recently resumed my status, as Facebook would state it, of being “in a relationship,” and having adopted a three-month-old Labrador-Australian Cow Dog hybrid named Beny (about whom you will no doubt hear more about in the future), I find myself again more paying attention to the endless stream of
Integrating the bulletins from the real world (for lack of a better phrase) with the books one chooses to read, and the movies and videos one views, is no small task, especially for dedicated, inveterate readers. As a youth I recall being able to compartmentalize the characters and storylines, or
This seems to be the season for the publication of some of my favorite writers. (Actually, I think every season is.) Alan Furst’s 10th novel, Spies of the Balkans (Random House), quells any fears that the author might be, as they say, phoning it in. Set in Salonika, Greece,
Maybe the only thing you can depend on these days, in what was to have been our brave new world (did I miss it?), is the predictability of those benighted outlets that coalesce to form the corporate behemoth inaccurately labeled “mainstream media.” Articles on beach books or summer reading, which
I must confess I hardly know where to begin in talking about what is destined to be seen as Anthony Julius’s magnum opus: Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England (Oxford U Press). Julius, who was the defense attorney in the infamous Irving vs. Lipstadt Holocaust
In that evanescent realm which I think of as my reading experiences there are a handful of writers whose narrative skills move them beyond the increasingly respectable category of so-called “genre fiction” to the seemingly more respected arena of “literary fiction”—Elmore Leonard, George Pelecanos, Charles McCarry, Alan Furst, Thomas
Such has been the influence of Chilean novelist Robert Bolaño that every posthumous publication of his ouevre has been hungrily devoured by the growing multitudes of his admirers. Now comes Antwerp, translated by Natasha Wimmer (New Directions), which was written in 1980 but first published in 2002, just before Bolaño’
Though throughout my reading life I would occasionally read short fiction, it wasn’t until I spoke with writer/Florida State University creative writing program head honcho Mark Winegardner that I saw short stories in a different light. In my world—forget me as a college professor and a writer—
Texas is the punch line to a lot of gallows humor about the American criminal justice system, and my recent note on attorney David Dow’s book, The Autobiography of an Execution, points out the reality. Here’s some data to add to the grim picture: * Rank of Texas’s
There is an odd reversal of polarities when the notion of resting and setting aside a period of time for a kind of imposed tranquility is considered utopian. But of course the achievement of states-of-affairs, when the modifier “24/7” is viewed as a positive attribute implying at the least
In spite of a conscientious indifference in the more reactionary and confused quarters of the American polity, that pesky Vietnam thing still lingers in the ether, foreshadowing and resonating and doing everything except fading into the obscurity Americans generally ignore known as history. Fortunately, or inshallah, the history has been
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 kind)
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
I’d be surprised that if you are here reading the results of my keyboard clattering(s) you haven’t somehow heard about The Melting Season (Riverhead) byJami Attenberg (The Kept Man). From my aerie in suburban Boston I can tell there is a minor groundswell of approval for Attenberg’
According to pollsters, two thirds of the U.S. population support the death penalty—disregarding racial discrepancies or anomalies in its administration. Interestingly, Texas, where attorney David Dow resides and defends death row clients, has executed 449 out of 1,194 since 1976. David Dow has represented over a hundred
British novelist Robert Harris’s (Imperium) second installment in his trilogy of the late Roman Republic, Conspirata: A Novel of Ancient Rome (Simon & Schuster), begins when Cicero becomes Consul of Rome, a position which he achieved at the end of the first installment of this fictional history. As he
Robert Stone, who some commentators credit with being “one of our greatest living authors”—an assertion with which I would not argue—has a new (his second) story collection, Fun with Problems (Houghton Mifflin). If you know any of Stone’s work (Dog Soldiers, Prime Green), the word “fun” will
When I first became acquainted with Jonathan Dee back in the mid-’90s, he had two decent novels under his belt—A Lover of History, The Liberty Campaign—and he was a wisecracking senior editor at the Paris Review, educated at Yale and seemingly destined to write smart “well-crafted” novels.
The velocity with which books can be—dare I use the verb “written?”—published these days is astonishing. Barely has a disaster decimated an unfortunate number of humans and their habitat, a scandal titillated millions, or a suspected-pederast superstar passes to his greater, when out pops a, uh, tome. Now
One ought not fault Amy Bloom’s admirers for pushing at the limits of sensible praise as one such does in describing Bloom’s new book, Where the God of Love Hangs Out (Random House) as “beautifully astute.” Not exactly a coupling of words that sings. If you have followed
Mississipian Steve Yarbrough’s Prisoners of War is a novel to which I regularly make reference as one that is vastly underappreciated—though now having read four of his novels, I want to suggest that this Southern storyteller deserves a wider readership. And it is possible that his newest effort,
In baseball lingo, Sam Shepard is at least a four-tool talent—writer, playwright, screenwriter (Paris, Texas), and actor. As an actor Shepard has made valuable contributions to some memorable films (Days of Heaven, The Right Stuff), and he has written over 40 plays (The God of Hell,Buried Child), many
Miami has certainly had a fair share of superlative chroniclers—Joan Didion’s Miami, David Rieff’s Going to Miami: Tourists, Exiles, and Refugees in the New America, among others—while Miami Beach has been celebrated mostly by crime story writers—Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard and Charles Wiliford, and TV
In their eye-opening new book Slow Death by Rubber Duck: The Secret Danger of Everyday Things (Counterpoint), Canadian environmental activists Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie quote from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring: “For the first time in the history of the world every human being is now subjected to contact
Boston, which has variously proclaimed itself the Athens of America and The Hub of the Universe, counts in its history a number of events well known to non-residents, most of which have to do with crime: the Boston Massacre; the Boston Police Strike of 1919 and also the Great Molasses
No doubt my fondness for the geography of my youth (Chicago and neighboring Big 10 states) has contributed to my sensitivity to regional chauvinism—who coined the phrase “flyover zone” anyway? Anyway, that fondness extends to the bountiful literature that pours out of that region from the pens of Kent
Jim Harrison’s screenplays and almost 30 books, including 15 of fiction (in his own reckoning, he is first and foremost a poet, and also a wonderful food commentator) have firmly fixed him as a shining star in the literary constellation—though I am hard put to understand how he
Ten years ago, controversial French intellectual/political philosopher Jean François Revel (How Democracies Perish, The Totalitarian Temptation), who died in 2006,published Last Exit to Utopia: The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era (Encounter Books) in France (called the Grand Parade there). Newly translated, Revel’s focus, which enraged
Tennessee born writer Madison Smartt Bell was anointed early, making one of those (silly) Grantalist of young authors to watch. Despite the perils of early celebrity or recognition, Bell has published about a baker’s dozen of novels, the most compelling of which I find to be his Haitian Revolutionary
Will Self continues his preoccupation with anatomical titles—his last book was entitled The Butt, an early work was Cock & Bull—with Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes (Bloomsbury). This tome contains four stories interconnected by the state of the various characters’ livers; a
The possibility of Simon Mawer’sMan Booker Prize shortlisted novel The Glass Room (Other Press) running off the tracks into banality is immanent in its elements—thankfully, it stays the course, as a superlative story ranging over 60 years (1929-1990) of the 20th century. Set in post-WWI central Europe, Jewish
This may be a commonplace occurrence—what to do when you read a derogatory review by a writer you admire, of a work by another author you regard highly? It is not common for me, though, as I rarely read reviews. In this case my faith in the author in
Novelist Philip Caputo (Acts of Faith, A Rumor of War) skillfully interweaves the post-9/11 reality of drug cartels and immigrant hordes with the early 20th-century world of the Mexican-U.S. border in a multigenerational tale. The lives of a grieving widower, an illegal Mexican alien, and various narcotraficantes--as well
While preparing my chat with American short fiction samurai Tobias Wolff for publication, I realized that though I greatly appreciate short stories I have not been paying sufficient attention to them in this space. Luckily, I have the 2009 edition of The Best American Short Stories at hand. As you
Amongst the incalculably lengthy list of authors who have not received their due (also an incalculable notion) you will find, with regularity, the name of Padgett Powell. Powell (Edisto), who teaches at the University of Florida and has collected plaudits from Ian Frazier and Barry Hannah to Saul Bellow, has
Po Bronson first came to my attention with his 1995 lampoon of the insular world of bond-trading, Bombardiers. My next awareness of him came in a conversation with novelist and Iowa Writers' Workshop mentor Ethan Canin, who spoke highly of Bronson and, if memory serves well, suggested Bronson was
Ana Menéndez, (Loving Che) a former columnist/reporter for the Miami Herald has written, variously, about Cuba, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Istanbul, and India, her base for three years. With her new opus, The Last War (HarperCollins), she has authored two novels (in addition to a story collection). Set in Istanbul, The
Not exactly a household name (except in certain effete and cultivated households) thespian (his credits include over a hundred movie and TV appearances--My Dinner With Andre, Shadows and Fog, Toy Story, The Princess Bride, Life on Mars among them) playwright (The Designated Mourner and The Fever) Wallace Shawn, scion of
There are some writers--for me, Rick Russo, Jim Harrison, Elmore Leonard, George Pelecanos, Amy Bloom, to name a few--for whom the matter at hand is not whether but rather how much I will like their latest creation. To be honest in Russo's (Bridge of Sighs, Empire Falls) case,
Looking at Rebecca Solnit's body of published work--Hope in the Dark, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, and As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art--makes obvious her penchant for
There are probably a few handfuls of writers who fall into the unfortunate category of being designated writers' writers. I say unfortunate because it suggests an explanation for a lack of wide(r) recognition--though ostensibly it is meant as something positive. The late FrederickBusch seemed to be pigeonholed in
I suppose if there were many American readers who were interested in the harrowing and haunting recollections of Haifa Zangana, an exiled Iraqi patriot and lifelong (since the '70s) resistance fighter, the tone and palette of U.S. involvement in Iraq and the Middle East might have taken a
To say the dreary miasma of orthodox socialism was additionally burdened with the psychotic tyranny of Josef "Man of Steel" Stalin cannot adequately represent the terrors and horrors of the Stalinist regime. Martin Amis, in his controversial Koba the Dread, drums up Robert Conquest's heuristic device
Shamefully, I must confess that while full of springtime ambition and whatever else is in that season that spurs us to grasp beyond our reach, I had intended to assemble a gaggle of poetry titles coincident with National Poetry Month--though that commemoration has about as much weight as National Lawn
OK, unlike everyone else in my generation, I was not at Woodstock. (Then and now, not exactly my idea of fun.) But as this week marks the 40th anniversary of the legendary cultural milestone, you will be carpet-bombed with endless blather and footage--unless you are sequestered in Guantánamo. Michael Lang,
Meryl Streep's uncanny film portrayal of Julia Child in Julie & Julia (based on Julie Powell's Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen and Child's My Life in France) has now occasioned Michael Pollan's New York Times Magazine
If you have read novelist John Crowley's fiction (Endless Things and Little, Big), his new opus may come as something of a surprise--as his penchant is for what some refer to as slipstream or interstitial fiction. Four Freedoms (William Morrow) is set in the early years of World
Tasmanian (go ahead, tell me you know where Tasmania is) novelist Richard Flanagan (Gould's Book of Fish, The Unknown Terrorist [which he dedicated to the beleaguered and persecuted Australian Muslim convert David Hicks]) joins a growing and welcome list of novels that have the illustrious 19th century English
At some point, someone will probably fabricate one of those pop-sociology books about the generation that is averse to reading instruction manuals: The Dummies' Guide to Dummies. (Who is buying all those self-help books and keeping windbags like Tony Roberts in silk?) As I belong to that set and
National Book Award-winning writer Denis Johnson (Tree of Smoke) occupies an anomalous place in the melee that passes for the American literary culture. Viewed as a prickly sort and outsider (he lives in Northern Idaho and passed on attendance to the N.B.A. awards ceremony), Johnson's Jesus&
Stories attach themselves to all manner of things, and occasionally those stories rise to some level of perpetuity. I wish I had a dramatic story for how I came to read Nick Antosca's disturbing, riveting, and eerie second novel, Midnight Picnic (Word Riot Press). For all I know,
I first became aware of Uruguayan writer, activist, and dog loverEduardo Galeano about 20 years ago through Lawrence Weschler's investigations of the amnesty movements in Brazil and Argentina during their post-military dictatorship years (Weschler's work culminated in his book, A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts With
Canadian poet and occasional novelist Anne Michaels, whose first novel, Fugitive Pieces, was internationally lauded and awarded, returns some 12 years later with a sophomore effort every bit as engaging. The Winter Vault (Knopf) is brimming with gorgeous prose and imagery—frequently cited as an example of, uh, “lyric fiction”
There was a time in the 1990s when turning to the New York Observer offered amusing and enlightening relief from the prevalence of so-called service journalism in the form of Michael M. Thomas and his column. (Thomas incisively pointed out that the new generation of journalists felt that reporting was
David Foster Wallace’s suicide last autumn sent shockwaves through the literary world unleashing a torrent of verbiage, opinionizing, and hand wringing—it seemed as if anyone who ever read a book weighed in on the sorrow, D.F.W.’s legacy, or somesuch. How to explain the reaction? Wallace’
An April 1999 event at a Colorado high school should have changed the way Americans view childhood and child rearing. It did for me. As the parent of a young boy I can assure you that the harrowing and tragic events at Columbine High School, where two teenage students attempted
Alex Rodriguez stopped being interesting to me about the time he went from the Seattle Mariners—where he played with Junior Griffey—to Texas, where he was handed 200 million dollars to play baseball. Come to think of it, major-league baseball became much less interesting to me at about the
While I am not a big fan of Oprah Winfrey, I don’t hold it against any writer that Oprah (who is not a tasteless dummy) may have brought them the immense commercial benefits that seem to accrue from her majestic anointment(s). Apparently, Jane Hamilton (A Map of the
As a young American, I was never enamored of the so-called horse operas that populated the airwaves in the ‘50s and ‘60s: Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, The Cisco Kid, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, The Rifleman, Bonanza, (Maverick and Have Gun—Will Travel excepted). What these stories had in common was the demonization
Photographer Philippe Halsman snapped some of the planet’s most famous faces—Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Bob Hope, and countless others—and his portraits adorned more than 100 Life covers, when the magazine was a weekly publication and a real media force.
