Books
The biography is a remarkable read. It has all the hefty research you’d expect from a scholarly work, yet the story is told through prose fit for a great novel.
Read MoreAndré du Bouchet writes the kind of poetry that other poets ponder, perhaps resist or even reject for a while, yet inevitably return to study even if (or because) their own poetics are starkly dissimilar to his.
Read MoreSo much of what this novel has to say feels bracing and necessary. This is where a good part of America lives—dangling over a chasm.
Read MoreThere’s no debate: The Great Gatsby is the Great American Novel, with Moby Dick and Huckleberry Finn as also-rans.
Read MoreWhile The Bone Clocks is compulsively readable, there are too many parts of this book that can only be called lazy.
Read MoreReady to Burst is a compelling, intricately structured story told in resourceful, oft-poetic language by a influential Haitian poet and novelist.
Read MoreAn exciting complement to the new book is a traveling retrospective of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s films, a rare opportunity to see 19 of the director’s movies shown on 35mm film: at Cambridge’s Harvard Film Archive through November 2.
Read MoreHow well Conversations with Beethoven works as fiction will depend on the engagement and imaginative powers of the reader.
Read MoreLila is an ambitious book that is deeply flawed and not nearly in the same class as Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead.
Read MoreOtto Dov Kulka’s exploration of the time he spent in Auschwitz as a child won the 2014 Jewish Quarterly-Wingate prize, one of the judges calling it “the greatest book on Auschwitz since Primo Levi.”
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Arts Commentary: Rich in Creativity — But Nothing Else