Books

Book Review: “Shame” — Racism and the Sins of Paternalistic Liberalism

April 8, 2015
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According to Shelby Steele, white liberals “dissociate” themselves from the past sins of white America by subscribing to the “poetic truth” that the United States is “characterologically evil.”

Book Review: When Fate Totters — Pascal Garnier’s Bleak Romans Noirs

April 7, 2015
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Pascal Garnier’s characters slip through cracks, cross borders, pass through the thin mirrors of the self, and commit irreparable acts.

Book Review: “The Bridal Chair” — Surviving Genius

April 2, 2015
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The Bridal Chair will not only answer many questions about this complicated, famous family; like Chagall’s best work, it will also linger in the mind.

Book Review: “Going into the City” — A Restrained Portrait of the Critic as a Young Man

March 31, 2015
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Robert Christgau, the author of 14,000 record reviews, makes the case for expansiveness as the best aesthetic.

Book Review: Three New Novels Explore the Power of Trauma

March 31, 2015
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A trio of new novels suggest that bad as it gets may not be as bad as it can get.

Book Review: Antonio Tabucchi’s “Time Ages in a Hurry” — A Diary of Dreams

March 25, 2015
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Antonio Tabucchi’s fluid style moves easily from realism to surrealism, banal conversation to poetic free association, reportage to allusion.

Book Review: “The Dirty Dust” — Voices From the Underground, Sublime, Spiteful, Satiric

March 23, 2015
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The Dirty Dust is a novel of almost unbelievable invention, humor, pathos, eloquence, and fury.

Book Review: “The Sexual Night” — Origins Unknown

March 21, 2015
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French writer Pascal Quignard strives to peer beyond, or behind, what psychoanalysts typically rationalize as the primal parental realities.

Book Review: “Happy Are the Happy” — You Can’t Get There from Here

March 17, 2015
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Yasmina Reza’s dollhouse of a novel is a miniaturist’s miracle.

Book Review: Scott McCloud’s “The Sculptor” — A Life in His Hands

March 14, 2015
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A graphic novel about the death of art and the art of death

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