Month: May 2009
A novel about sexual obsession, inspired by “Lolita,” stretches the limits of credulity. Rupert: A Confession By Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, Translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison, Open Letter, $12.95, 131 pages Reviewed by Tommy Wallach I consider myself something of an expert in the seldom studied theme of impotence in film and literature. Most…
Read MoreJune 3rd marks the 20th anniversary of the brutal suppression of the Tiananmen student movement. To mark the occasion, excerpts from “Massacre,” an epic poem about the violence that landed the writer in jail.
Read MoreLong-time readers of The Arts Fuse may already have noticed a few changes in the site. The most obvious is that https://live-arts-fuse.pantheonsite.io now takes you to a new (albeit simple) home page for The Arts Fuse website, with links to The Arts Fuse blog, podcasts and image galleries. We have plans to expand The Arts…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Sigmund Freud sets out a weirdly Brobdingnagian survival scenario for kids. Young children rely on their parents, dependent on the intimidating bounty and emotional whims of “adult” giants who could easily dish out too much smothering love or unconscious hostility. Novelist Peter Stephan Jungk weaves a playfully tragicomic variation on this primal…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx In the latest World Books podcast I talk to Robert Chandler, who along with his wife Elizabeth and Olga Meerson has translated Andrey Platonov’s novel “The Foundation Pit” for New York Review Books.
Read MoreBy Peter Walsh Almost overlooked in the wider, world financial crisis this spring is the precipitous decline, and perhaps impending fall, of the American art museum. All of a sudden, the money just isn’t there for them any more.
Read MoreBy Liao Yiwu, Wen Huang, and Bill Marx Each time a disaster hits China, we all become refugees and strangers in our own land. — Liao Yiwu Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, 50, revisits the earthquake damaged Gu Temple in the town of Jiezi in the Sichuan Province. He was interviewing May 12th survivors for his…
Read MoreSometimes I wonder if Euripides saw the very texture of reality as ironic. Saw the gods in their interactions with human beings as essentially playing. A frightening idea. But at least it entails the assumption that Euripides himself was not playing. Anne Carson, in her introduction to her translation of Euripides’ “Orestes” in “An Oresteia.”…
Read MoreWidening literary perspectives is admirable, but as the festival matures somebody at PEN has to decide what World Voices is supposed to be. By Bill Marx My admittedly small sampling of the 5th Anniversary of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature in New York last week left me feeling baffled. I attended seven…
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Music Commentary: A Mystery Solved on the 50th Anniversary of the Release of “Queen II”