Books

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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Fuse Dispatches: Lessons Drawn — William Kentridge’s “Six Drawing Lessons”

March 23, 2012
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After hearing just the first of William Kentridge’s six Norton Lectures, I have no doubt that this series of “Drawing Lessons” will be one of the most entertaining and enlightening artistic events of 2012.

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Poetry Review: Yves Bonnefoy — A Provocative “Second Simplicity”

March 13, 2012
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This handsome edition of Yves Bonnefoy’s recent poetry and prose in English translation is a stunning presentation of a major poet.

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Theater Review: Freedom for “The Whipping Man”

March 11, 2012
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An unusual and powerful historical drama that looks at the troubled relationship between Jews and freed slaves at the end of The Civil War.

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Book Commentary: Hooked on Phonics? — A Brief Reply to Gary Lutz’s “The Sentence is a Lonely Place”

March 9, 2012
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While sound is certainly important, and language in the proper hands has its own music, syllabic harmonies need not be trumpeted as though they were the foundation of good prose.

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Book Review and Interview: “The Lost History of 1914” — Almost the War That Wasn’t

March 8, 2012
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In his exploration of history, Jack Beatty suggests that World War I, as we know it, was an improbable event.

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Book Review: So You Say You Want a Revolution? “Democratic Enlightenment”

March 6, 2012
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Jonathan I. Israel has written a monumental three-volume history of the Enlightenment, approximately 2500 pages long, not including three lengthy bibliographies. His erudition is fabulous; his range is dizzying.

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Book Review: Celebrating “The Flowers of War”

March 5, 2012
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A strange mix of characters who all have complicated pasts gives rise to a novel that blossoms — exactly as a flower does — into a complex drama that includes several points of view and a wide range of emotions.

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