Melville House

Book Review: Singing the Boomer Blues — Buddhist Version

February 14, 2023
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As cultural critique, Curtis White’s Transcendent comes across as a modest if chilly yip of Zen resignation.

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Book Review: Steve Stern’s “Village Idiot” — Painted into a Corner

September 6, 2022
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Steve Stern’s novel about the Jewish expressionist painter Chaim Soutine is more informative than it is engaging.

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Book Review: “Strange Beasts of China” — An Exuberant Chinese Fantasy

July 15, 2021
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The volume’s spirited imagination is strong enough to compensate for flaws in its translation.

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Book Review: The Life of Lou Reed — Those With No Moral Compass Beware

March 12, 2015
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We learn, over and over, that the author of the song “Vicious” dispensed his legendary acts of cruelty with sadistic aplomb.

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Short Fuse: Who Hates Yeats?

May 24, 2010
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Critic Paul Berman’s problem with the arts plays too significant a role in his work to be written off as but the tin ear of an historian and social thinker with weightier matters on his mind; his misreading of the arts is a fulcrum of his social thinking. The Flight of the Intellectuals, by Paul…

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