Books
The Chester Theatre Company’s production, directed by Ron Bashford, runs over two hours with nary a dull moment and the actors seem to be having as wonderful a time as the audience.
Read More“To End All Wars” embodies its themes –- the decline of the aristocracy, the rise of propaganda, the transformation of war-making, the heroism of resistance –- so skillfully in a dozen or so major characters and another dozen minor ones that this history of the First World War reads like a lively group biography.
Read MoreThere is nothing shocking, nothing sensational, nothing revelatory, in this workmanlike production of ARMS AND THE MAN. Nor should there be, as the play doesn’t give much room for innovation.
Read MoreThe wily Enrique Vila-Matas remains wary but respectful of Ernest Hemingway and asserts his independence by going on his own self-consciously vaudevillian way—Juan Gabriel Vásquez is too subservient to elude the shadow of Joseph Conrad.
Read MoreThe theme of fading passion would have been enough. It is the theme of many a love story. It would have been enough for this chess story. But author Robert R. Desjarlais won’t let it be enough.
Read More“There were times when I felt as if I were perpetually stuck, like in that film, ‘Groundhog Day,’ in the spring of 1992 just as Bosnia was careening into conflict. At one point I went to Sarajevo to visit friends and was relieved, indeed surprised, to find that while I had been re-living the war over and over, the city was gradually rebuilding and leaving the war behind.”
Read More“On China” boasts photos of Henry Kissinger’s numerous visits to China. In many you see him smiling hugely, brandishing chopsticks alongside the likes of Zhou Enlai. He’s enjoying making history — and the food.
Read MoreONE HUNDRED NAMES FOR LOVE is an intermittently engaging and very useful book for millions of partners, parents, children, friends and caretakers of stroke victims as well as anyone else interested in the workings of the mind.
Read MoreAt the very least, showing the triumph of reality over inane illusions of perfection doesn’t lead to particularly complex drama; it is sort of like picking off myopic dreamers in a barrel.
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Book Commentary: A Thousand Words for Paul West
Paul West’s goal is to expand consciousness through the uninhibited play of the imagination, to revel in the glory of words, not to preach lessons in civic do-gooding. And that anarchistic intensity has gotten him into trouble with those who mistakenly believe that exploring the mind of evil indicates approval.
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