Books

Book Review: Two Disturbing But Disappointing Books on Why Women Drink

September 21, 2013
Posted in , ,

There are hundreds of studies to be analyzed and many experts who could have been interviewed in depth, but both authors have chosen to write breezy books that can be characterized as “journalism-lite.”

Read More

Short Fuse Book Review: “Dissident Gardens” — Fantasy Meets Radical Politics

September 21, 2013
Posted in , ,

It’s hard to grasp how Jonathan Lethem assimilated all this material — historical and fantastic — and gave it new narrative life in Dissident Gardens, except by granting, to start with, his special genius for absorption.

Read More

Poetry Review: The Dark of Love –The Poetry of Patrizia Cavalli

September 18, 2013
Posted in , , ,

If Patrizia Cavalli’s poetry is egocentric, even probably autobiographical, its narrator shows a detachment enabling her to observe herself from one remove, even when she describes herself in the élans of attraction.

Read More

Author Interview: George Scialabba’s “For the Republic” — An Independent View

September 15, 2013
Posted in , ,

George Scialabba is still outfoxing the professional eggheads in For the Republic, his third collection of essays on political and cultural topics.

Read More

Book Review: Herbert Huncke — The “American Hipster” Who Influenced The Beat Movement

September 11, 2013
Posted in , ,

Hilary Holladay’s biography of Herbert Huncke provides valuable insight into a person and world that were begging to be explored.

Read More

Book Review: “The Goddess Chronicle” — Needs Less Plot, More Imagination

August 28, 2013
Posted in , , ,

There is a paucity of richness in The Goddess Chronicle. The myth might have been, but wasn’t, mined for tales of compassion, or inevitability of sorrow, or the psychology of misogyny or of revenge, or the strictures of fate.

Read More

Book Review: “Scissors” — A Sharp Exploration of the Creative Process

August 26, 2013
Posted in , ,

Scissors is a roman à clef. But Stéphane Michaka has not composed a fictionalized biography mapping out the itinerary of Raymond Carver’s life. The novelist above all focuses on the creative process in which a writer named “Raymond” is involved.

Read More

Poetry Review: Imagine — Yoko Ono Plants an “Acorn”

August 21, 2013
Posted in , ,

Yoko Ono has always been the kind of artist more interested in getting into your head than convincing you to occupy hers.

Read More

Fuse Book Review: “The Infatuations” — Funereal Ruminations on a Murder

August 18, 2013
Posted in , , ,

Perhaps it is not so much that the characters are thinly developed but that it is hard to make them out through the scrim of their Dostoevskian lucubrations.

Read More

Short Fuse Book Review: “Zealot” — Jesus as Jewish Peasant and Revolutionary

August 14, 2013
Posted in , ,

I am a secular Jew who can’t but welcome Zealot‘s conclusion that Christianity pulled a role reversal on Jesus, and made this failed revolutionary Jew into someone who eschewed his people and its traditions in favor of Roman power.

Read More

Recent Posts