Books
Alice Oswald’s “Memorial” begins with a list of 214 names, a bare, sorrowful cousin to the ship’s roll. If you know the old stories, you’ll begin to recognize some names, and then start to look forward to others.
Updated Sept. 19. Performances tonight and tomorrow evening by the Fred Hersch Trio and the Jeremy Pelt Quintet at Scullers have been cancelled due to a power outage at the DoubleTree hotel. Also, a late addition to the schedule: poet Robert Pinsky and pianist Laurence Hobgood at Club Oberon; plus, a reminder that Brazilian guitarist Rogerio Souza is at Ryles tonight. (For details, see below.) As autumn approaches, Berklee celebrates Ray Charles, NEC kicks off 40th anniversary festivities for its Contemporary Improvisation department, and New England jazz boasts a series of spectacular duo performances, Brazilian music in a variety of flavors, release events for new CDs, and some all-star quintets.
The big theme in fiction this summer was the resonance of disappearance — seen as satire, as melodrama, and as tragedy.
“There aren’t a lot of roles for Middle Eastern actors in the United States. And it does mean something to me to be able to create roles like this.”
Many historical dramas are content to use the past as a lens through which to view the present, but “Hand in Hand Together” does more than explore how conflicting ideologies influenced the creation of modern Israel. Dramatist A. B. Yehoshua explores the other possible routes history may have taken.
From the Berkshires to Cape Cod, and with a major stop in Beantown, Massachusetts is the place to be for the autumn jazz festival season.
I can say, without equivocation, that Helen Dunmore’s novel “The Greatcoat” is no “The Turn of the Screw.”
The latest play by the celebrated Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua is a historical drama that revolves around an imaginary conversation between two major political rivals about Zionism and the founding of Israel. Israeli Stage is presenting the American premiere of a staged reading of the script.
In the encyclopedic, fascinating, and intermittently infuriating “The Woman Reader,” author Belinda Jack argues that we should not fear the battle between paper vs. pixels, but value reading and the ways it nourishes a woman’s inner life.
Book Commentary/Review: Imagine There Are No Negative Reviews — It’s Not So Easy If You Try
Who has taken criticism out of the hands of the “true critics”? Is someone making me read rancid Amazon reader reviews? Where do we look for the “true critics”?
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