Books

Theater Feature: Edward Gorey Takes the Stage

May 29, 2011
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Author Carol Verburg covers a sinfully neglected part of Edward Gorey’s career –- the books on his art deal cursorily, if at all, with his forays into theater as a director, designer, actor, and writer

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Book Review: An Intriguing but Annoying House of Exile

May 27, 2011
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Ambitious, by turns captivating and exasperating, this sprawling book is like an enormous photomontage—that popular German art form of the 1920s—made up of textual mosaics from newspaper articles, diary entries, letters, novels, or, on occasion, FBI files.

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Book Review: The Pale King– David Foster Wallace Finds the Magnificent in the Mundane

May 24, 2011
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If you haven’t before had the keen pleasure of reading David Foster Wallace, THE PALE KING is a fine gateway drug. Its 550 pages are broken into 50 sections, each digestible on its own without reference to the larger work The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. Little, Brown, 560 pages, $29.99 By Michael de…

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Fuse Book Review: A Puzzling Look at the West, Islam, and The Convert

May 21, 2011
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If you are going to write about this very charged subject, the West and Islam, why would you choose as a representative of that great and ancient culture a woman who is stunted emotionally, clearly unreliable, and probably mentally unstable?

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Fuse Poetry Commentary: Verse Into Verse — “Poetry” Awards Poetry a Prize

May 6, 2011
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In the future, when a literary historian looks at the long-forgotten Lilly Prize and wonders what did its selection panels get right, it will be recognized that it had been sensitive and intelligent enough to realize the beauty of David Ferry’s poetry, an oeuvre which is sure to grow in stature. By Daniel Bosch. In…

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Short Fuse Commentary/Review: A Social Problem

May 4, 2011
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I feel like such a nag, but someone ought to be able to point out a 300 lb gorilla in the room when it knuckle walks, glowers and pounds the walls. I will be that very nag and shortly name the ape accordingly. Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall—from America’s Brightest Prodigy to the…

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Book Review: Of Childhood and State Terror

May 2, 2011
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Set in the beginning of the “Dirty War” of Jorge Rafael Videla’s military junta in Argentina, a period characterized by assassination and disappearance, “Kamchatka” is a superb novel that refracts public, political events through the sensibilities of everyday life. Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras. Translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne. Black Kat, Grove/Atlantic, 311 pages…

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Book Review — A Wilde Child Restored: Dorian Gray Uncensored

April 25, 2011
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Editor Nicholas Frankel is right to argue that familiarity with Oscar Wilde’s original manuscript of The Picture of Dorian Gray deepens its vision, suggesting that the 1891 novel is a far less morally reassuring tale than readers have thought. The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition by Oscar Wilde. Edited by Nicholas Frankel.…

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Book Review: A Cinematic Russian Winter (Updated)

April 21, 2011
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Russian Winter is part mystery and part love story, drawing on the (overly) familiar tropes of each: the missing jewels, the deceived lovers, and so on. The material is not original, but it is workable and proffers plenty of Hollywood glamor. Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay. Harper Perennial, 496 pages, $14.99. By Nora Delany It…

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Book Review: An Authoritative Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama

April 18, 2011
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Minor translation issues aside, The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama‘s excellent selection, colloquial and stage-friendly translations, and illuminating introduction undoubtedly make the volume the authoritative choice in teaching and reading modern Chinese drama for the foreseeable future. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama. Edited and with an introduction by Xiaomei Chen. Columbia University…

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