Books
The late writer Peter Matthiessen was one of the last great frontiersmen, one of the last great travelers taking voyages of discovery.
Kevin Young’s poetic line is generally on the concise side, generating a pithy, earthy, evocative quality that hovers somewhere between the haiku-like jazziness of Robert Creeley and the delta blues of Son House or Skip James.
A fast-paced, fact-laden book by two “Boston Globe” reporters about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings that doesn’t answer the tough questions.
Everyone these days is racing through “Blood Will Out,” an undeniably enthralling three-hour read.
Arts Fuse writer Anthony Wallace talks about the latest accolade for his short story collection “The Old Priest” — it was a finalist for the 2014 PEN/Hemingway Award.
Perhaps a movie such as “The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is much more than a zany comedy, can lead us back, as director Wes Anderson may have intended, to the fabulous writing of Stefan Zweig.
“To the End of the Land” is about the devastation of war, how war erodes the human spirit, yet how that spirit is far more resilient that we may have ever suspected.
“Falling Out of Time” is a book that gives all the truth that Israeli writer David Grossman can deliver, and far more intimacy than we strangers who are his readers have earned.
What about today? Has Russia finally hit bottom and recovered? Is the political economy of vodka a thing of the past?
The books are bleak in that Pierre Michon provides no reassuring, idealistic view of the creative urge. Art leads to no transcendence, no permanent uplifting sentiment. Making poems or making pictures is a rough daily business.
Arts Remembrance: Sonny Rollins, Jazz’s ‘Saxophone Colossus,’ Dies at 95