Books
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 MoreYoko Ono has always been the kind of artist more interested in getting into your head than convincing you to occupy hers.
Read MorePerhaps 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 MoreI 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 MoreIntellectual frameworks such as “the rise of Europe,” “the decline of the East,” or “the clash of civilizations,” tell us more about the laziness of the human mind than they do about history.
Read MoreRamsey’s book on Bud Powell is both a provocative read and a disappointing one. Anyone thinking this will be an illuminating portrait of a jazz master is likely to suffer a serious case of buyer’s remorse.
Read MoreThis novella is a gift to all of us who love Patrick White’s strangely alive prose and a welcome addition to his oeuvre. And for those who don’t know his work, it is a terrific way to be introduced to one of the 20th century’s finest writers.
Read More“Reading Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqẓān” is a mesmerizing study that will enchant anyone interested in interdisciplinary, cross-cultural explorations of the history of science that transform the way we look at the past and the present.
Read MoreThe latest LP from the dream pop band Candy Claws turns out to be its most profound and impressive statement to date.
Read More“Into the Nightmare” is a great book, a monumental book, and an authoritative assimilation of forty years of what everyone, off and on the record, has argued about the Kennedy assassination, plus what author Joseph McBride himself concludes.
Read More