Bill Marx
By Bill Marx Book reviewing is at a crossroads. Major newspapers and magazines are cutting column inches devoted to the evaluation of books, while blogs and book review sites online raise issues of ethical standards and quality control. Where should those who believe in the survival of book criticism expend their time and energy? Can…
By Bill Marx A major Italian novelist with a worldwide reputation, Alberto Moravia, would have been 100 this year, but even in his homeland the parties are halfhearted. We should be breaking out the champagne and discovering this still subversive realist. The excellent Literary Saloon recently sent me to an article in Il velino that…
By Bill Marx Al Alvarez’s new book of essays provides an opportunity to also strongly recommend his first collection of literary commentary and reviews, 1969’s Beyond All This Fiddle, one of the most invigorating collections of cultural commentary from that period. The latest issue of the TLS features an irritatingly short review of Risky Business,…
By Bill Marx Fiction in translation deserves all the notice it can get, but it doesn’t do anyone any good to patronize writers and readers by duplicating the happy talk that is turning people off of blurb-ridden book reviews in the mainstream media. My friend Chad Post, formerly at Dalkey Archive Press, has begun a…
By Bill Marx In his critically acclaimed novels and stories, Japanese writer Haruki Murakami sings of the subterranean connections between software and the supernatural. After Dark (Knopf, 191 pp, $22.95) Haruki Murakami is a hip cultural diagnostician who would like to be viewed as a melancholic poet of the postmodern condition, a writer who has…
A conversation with Douglas Carlton Abrams, author of the erotically-charged novel “The Lost Diary of Don Juan: An Account of the True Arts of Passion and the Perilous Adventure of Love.” By Bill Marx Readers looking for a retread of Errol Flynn’s antics as the infamous lover will be disappointed — though not grievously so,…
Bill Marx speaks with award-winning American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. Also, dancing away at the video arcade. Download Part I and Part II of this interview with Suzan-Lori Parks.
Not every critic is inspired by British playwright Tom Stoppard’s epic, Tony award-winning trilogy about the trials and tribulations of the 19th century Russian radical Alexander Herzen. Download the podcast By Bill Marx I had high expectations for Tom Stoppard’s labor of love, but walked away from his bloated homage to the great Russian journalist…
Bill Marx talks with the Fogg Art Museum’s Susan Dackerman about DISSENT!, an exhibit that surveys printmaking and the history of political protest. [audio:https://artsfuse.org/podcasts/protest.mp3] DISSENT!,” an illuminating exhibition (closed) at the Harvard University Art Museums through February 25, provided some valuable insight into what it was like when protest art had some cultural clout. And…
Arts Commentary: Squandered Tears for Criticism?
By Bill Marx Criticism of the fine arts is dying in regional newspapers, but don’t waste too much time mourning the loss. Arts blogger and Wall Street Journal theater critic Terry Teachout’s recent article on how arts criticism is vanishing in regional newspapers hits the nail on the head, though he is either too considerate…
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