Books

“The Bad Backwards Walking” — A Dispatch from William Kentridge’s Fourth Norton Lecture

April 12, 2012
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William Kentridge spoke of the value of using a mirror to re-learn what he already knew how to do; the clear implication was that we are daily surrounded by mirror-images that we do not see for themselves but that hold the potential to alter our relationships to our tools and to our visions.

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Fuse Commentary: All Cultural Things Shining at the Oscars

April 8, 2012
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The core claim of the book is that the contemporary culture is nihilistic in outlook, but unnecessarily so. The authors believe there to be a remedy to our debilitating amnesia —- to integrate our lives, in some ways, into the world as perceived by our cultural forefathers.

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Book Review: Beyond Plums and Wheelbarrows — A New Biography of William Carlos Williams

April 8, 2012
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For the reader who is not already a William Carlos Williams enthusiast, the biography provides a good corrective to the Norton Anthology picture of Williams as the poet of tiny images, of plums and red wheelbarrows and fire engines with big gold letters.

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Short Fuse: On Pesach

April 6, 2012
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A new Haggadah has recently been published, the “New American Haggadah,” edited by Jonathan Safran Foer and translated by Nathan Englander. It’s getting a lot of attention and some criticism from “elders.” But maybe the Haggadah is beside the point. . .

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Music/Poetry Review: “Letters to Distant Cities” — An Appetite for the Forlorn

April 4, 2012
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The strength of the poetry is the ambiance it creates. Narrative is almost totally submerged in imagery, which may seem natural enough in verse but often is not the case.

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Book Review: “The O’Briens”— A Grand Family Epic

April 3, 2012
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“The O’Briens” is a good sink-your-teeth-into read that explores the capricious nature of destiny with grace and humor and shows great compassion for its characters.

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Fuse Dispatches: The Benefits of Doubt — A Dispatch from the Second of William Kentridge’s Norton Lectures

March 30, 2012
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For William Kentridge history accrues, falls dead, is born, washes up, piles up, and may be artfully arranged, but the most powerful place that this accretion might happen is in the artist’s studio, which is a metonym for the human mind.

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Book Review: “The Last Nude” — An Engaging Historical Fiction About Seductive Surfaces

March 30, 2012
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Even though she covers herself with demurely crossed arms, her gaze could burn holes through fabric. If it looks like the artist had a predilection for strong, bosomy girls, well, there’s a reason for that.

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Theater Review: Viva The Andersen Project — The Loneliness of Making Art

March 28, 2012
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Director Robert Lepage’s “The Andersen Project” is a masterful meditation on the agonizing process of artistic creation. Few scripts bring the mixed essence of opportunism and magic of show biz together so effortlessly.

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Book Feature: A Conversation with Claude Lanzmann about his memoir, “The Patagonian Hare”

March 26, 2012
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Claude Lanzmann is a great raconteur who’s honed his narrative skills as a veteran journalist. His memoir is exuberant and provocative at its best; bombastic and superficial at its worst.

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