Books

Book Review: Haruki Murakami — Marathon Storyteller

November 27, 2011
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In his dozen or so works of international best-selling fiction, Haruki Murakami has created an alternate-reality Japan that is at once magical and familiar, dangerous and comfortable, foreign but Westernized.

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Fuse Book Review: A Couple of Nihilists Ready for a Piece of the Action

November 26, 2011
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Both of these novels about social corruption should be in every Occupy Wall Street library in the country: inequality is not a matter of fate but the result of an exhausted acquiescence to subterfuge.

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Arts Commentary: The End (?) of Ignoring the Death of Arts Criticism

November 14, 2011
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Essentially, Kaiser’s plaint about the vanishing critic is useless because he, and so many other cultural kingpins worried about the end of professional criticism, offer no solutions.

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Arts Commentary: Not Just Shakespeare — “Anonymous” Wrongs Ben Jonson As Well

November 8, 2011
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The awkward logic of “Anonymous” turns the initially stalwart Ben Jonson into a ludicrous double-dealer, who advances his supreme tribute (‘Soul of the age!’) to a man he knows to have been a fraud and imposter.

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Classical Music Review: The Boston Lyric Opera — An Efficient and Satisfying “Macbeth”

November 7, 2011
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The Boston Lyric Opera’s new production of “Macbeth,” with sets designed by John Conklin, is based on elements of a New York City Opera production and plays up the macabre elements of the story, which are many.

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Book Review: “Maybe This Time” — The Fragility of Personal Identities in Surreal Worlds

November 7, 2011
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The nine tales found in “Maybe This Time” chart the unnerving psychological transformations of its characters. Its style forces us to reconsider our ways of reading and our childlike dependency on narrative authority.

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Theater Review: Ibsen’s DollHouse — Deconstructed

November 3, 2011
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Entertaining and provocative, this quick-witted and dreamlike evening of theater suggests that imbalances of power sacrifice individual freedoms and love. Everyone becomes a doll (master and servant) in a doll society.

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Book Review: Brilliant “Shards”

November 1, 2011
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In this novel, author Ismet Prcic’s confusion is so vivid that it becomes ours, making us participants in the story.

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Short Fuse Book Review: Admiring “The Submission”

October 30, 2011
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“The Submission” has been compared to Richard Price’s richly evocative novels of New York life. It’s an apt comparison, though Amy Waldman brings a new cast of characters to bear, members of the Bangladeshi community.

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Fuse Commentary: Meditating on Excellence in the Arts, High and Low

October 27, 2011
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What makes one opinion better than another? (Some opinions have been challenged more than others. Tested opinions are worth more than untested ones.) Can’t one enjoy an aesthetic experience without having to put it into words? (Absolutely, but those of us who write art criticism don’t have the luxury.)

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