Arts Fuse Editor
Paradise Road: Jack Kerouac’s Lost Highway and My Search for America by Jay Atkinson, Wiley and Sons, 250 pages, $25.95 Reviewed By Nancye Tuttle I’m ready to pack my bag and hit the road. But it isn’t Jack Kerouac’s iconic 1957 novel On the Road that’s fueling my wanderlust. It’s Jay Atkinson’s compelling, new memoir…
Read MoreBy Kate Vander Wiede The Cantab, as the regulars called The Cantab Lounge, is like a quirky not-quite-speakeasy complete with a narrow stairwell leading below street level and smoke-perfumed attendees. This night, bass chords shake the ceiling, courtesy of the band headlining one floor up. Dim lights hardly illuminate the cramped room, which is lined…
Read MoreThe thrilling visuals in this documentary about skydiving get some things right, but the film ends up sensationalizing the sport rather than illuminating it. “Adrenaline Rush: The Science of Risk” at the Museum of Science, IMAX, through January 23, 2010. Reviewed by Kate Vander Wiede I started skydiving for a few reasons. The first was…
Read MoreReviewed by William Webster In Boston’s world of classical music, Winsor Music is indeed a gem; its current director and founder (1996) Peggy Pearson, has done an incredible job pursuing the three dimensions of this organization — chamber music concert series, the commission of new works and a community outreach program engaging talented students in…
Read MoreAuthor Noah Wardrip-Fruin argues that each of the sometimes tangentially related processes in a video game shapes “the audience’s experience as fundamentally as the specifics of the images used in a motion picture.” Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies by Noah Wardrip-Fruin. The MIT Press, 480 pp, $34.95. Reviewed by Mark Nolan…
Read MoreA 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 MoreBy Anna Razumnaya An erudite, absorbing, and often very funny account of Russia’s pathological inability to condemn the Communist Party. Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the New Russia, by Jonathan Brent. Atlas & Co. Publishers, 335 pages A certain jealous vigilance is to be expected when a Russian reads a book about Russia written by…
Read MoreA brilliant Dutch novel that explores the connections to the disconnected. The Twin By Gerbrand Bakker Translated from the Dutch by David Colmer. Archipelago Books, 343 pages. Reviewed by Tommy Wallach It isn’t easy to write a compelling novel about loneliness, for the simple reason that loneliness is boring. It makes for something of a…
Read MoreCharlotte Roche is one of the most famous authors in Germany. Thomas Mann must be spinning in his grave. Wetlands By Charlotte Roche. Translated from the German by Tim Mohr. Grove Press, 240 pages. By Tommy Wallach On the subject of literary criticism, Martin Amis has written that “quotation is the reviewer’s only hard evidence.”…
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