Books

Film Commentary: “The Hobbit” in Print and in Film — A Quick Guide on How to Put the “Faux” in Folklore

May 28, 2013
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Director Peter Jackson in his film adaptation of The Hobbit abandons the intimate scale of the original wonder tale and mistakenly blows it up into mythic proportions.

Book Review: “The Woman of Porto Pim” — Riding on a Brilliant Train of Associations

May 28, 2013
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Antonio Tabucchi’s “travel book” transcends conventional literary forms: his stories occupy an attractive space between fiction and non-fiction, poetry, biography, short story and journalistic travel piece.

Poetry Review: Nobel Prizewinner Vicente Aleixandre—The Poetics of Kissing

May 27, 2013
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This translation of “Poems of Consummation” is important for several reasons, one of which is that the 1977 Nobel prizewinner—despite the award—has long been insufficiently preeminent in our Anglo-American view of twentieth-century Spanish poetry.

Book Review: Israeli Novelist A.B. Yehoshua’s Fascinating “Retrospective”

May 23, 2013
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This fascinating book ends, leaving the reader with all sorts of questions — but that is exactly what really good fiction always does. Opening our minds, etching characters in our imaginations, and generating all sorts of possibilities.

Book Review: Denise Levertov — More Than a Famous Antiwar Poet

May 22, 2013
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This meticulous biography of Anglo-American poet Denise Levertov is the labor of many years and of deep reflection and care.

REVISED: Judicial Review #11: “The Great Gatsby” — A Great Opera?

May 20, 2013
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This Judicial Review deals with the Boston premiere of John Harbison’s opera version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. Read the reactions and join the conversation.

Fuse News: The Perfect Book Review — Making Things Hot for Dan Brown’s “Inferno”

May 17, 2013
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Deadpan sarcasm perfectly pitched, absurdity of target (and publisher) punctured with a minimum of muss and fuss.

Book Review: The Fine-Spun Harmonic Furies of William Gass’s “Middle C”

May 12, 2013
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Despite “Middle C”’s relative cheeriness, the novel passes a tough sentence on the human race, so uncompromising that its protagonist has a hard time writing it down.

Book Review: A Compelling Look at the Life of Poet John Keats

May 9, 2013
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There is a steadiness about Nicholas Roe’s writing that is deceptive; the life in the Life does not jump off the page, but it accumulates during the reading so that something of what it felt like to be around John Keats remains, as things do when truly experienced.

Book Review: Vital, Phenomenal — Novelist Anthony Marra’s debut

May 8, 2013
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“A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” is spectacular.

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