Books

Book Review: The “Lightweight” Gallows Humor of Jean Echenoz

May 29, 2014
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Eschewing harrowing realistic description, Jean Echenoz adopts a jocular sardonic approach to the most gruesome battlefield realities.

Book Review: “On Leave” — An Engaging Anti-War Story From France

May 28, 2014
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“On Leave” is a worthwhile novel that deserves this English revival because it convincingly conveys the alienation felt by soldiers who return home on a brief leave from hostilities taking place abroad.

Book Review: “The Poets’ Wives” — What Does it Mean to be Married to a Poet?

May 23, 2014
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Taken as a whole, “The Poets’ Wives” is a fascinating, brave novel whose love of poetry breathes through all three sections.

Arts Remembrance: Polish Poet and Dramatist Tadeusz Różewicz — The Prophet of the Partial, the Herald of the Unfinished

May 22, 2014
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Tadeusz Różewicz’s best poems are blunt hammer strokes that pound at the impossibility of crafting poetry true to the sins of history.

Book Review: “The Star of Istanbul” — A Literary Historical Thriller

May 21, 2014
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Robert Olen Butler chose his protagonist wisely. Christopher Marlowe Cobb is a man of both intellect and physicality, of thought and action.

Book Review: “A Place in the Country” — A Heady Tour of W.G. Sebald Country

May 15, 2014
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It seems deeply appropriate that a superb book of essays by W.G. Sebald about his favorite writers should be his swan song.

Poetry Review: Translations of Two Wild Russian Poets, Their Flair Restored

May 14, 2014
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New translations of Soviet-era poets Vladimir Mayakovsky and Vladislav Khodasevich ask us to restore them to their rightful places in Russian and international literature .

Book Review: “The Democratic Surround” — Exploring the Makings of Mass Experience

May 10, 2014
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Fred Turner’s counterintuitive and subtle argument in The Democratic Surround draws a direct line between the design of museum exhibitions and the Be-Ins of the Summer of Love.

Arts Commentary: Who’s Afraid Of James Baldwin?

May 5, 2014
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So what we have is a failure of nerve — a reluctance to make students grapple with the considerable demands of James Baldwin’s prose and sensibility.

Book Interview: James Shapiro on America’s Complicated Relationship With Shakespeare

May 1, 2014
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“Americans have been most drawn to the great tragedies—in our classroom and on our stages. “

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