Books
“The Great American Railroad War” reminds us of an inspired journalistic reaction to the crimes of an earlier age of robber baron.
If the poems in “That Said: New and Selected Poems” had been ordered differently, the volume would have made more of its virtues.
Why does Laura Miller feel, given her belief that negative reviews are often useless, that she has to kick criticism while it is down? Why argue against the efforts of a small number of delusional reviewers in major publications who continue to speak fruitless negativity to the indifferent masses?
“New York Times” Book Critic Dwight Garner makes salient points about the need for incisive criticism, claiming that too much happy talk denies common sense and undercuts credibility. But the ‘gonzo’ masterwork “Fire the Bastards!” hammers the point home much more memorably.
“As an artist, you probably know when a project pulls at you, sometimes kicking and screaming. Shylock definitely has me by the back of the neck.”
Helen Constantine’s new translation of Balzac’s “The Wild Ass’s Skin” serves this wonderful and weird book well. It is one of the great, black comic fables in world literature, a dazzlingly demented exploration of a society’s lack of imagination.
In the heartrending “Three Strong Women,” award-winning novelist Marie NDiaye infuses her Senegalese women characters with a personal sense of dignity and a strong belief in self.
Sponsored by the Harvard Writing Program and the Harvard Summer School, the event was introduced, perhaps humorously, to the audience as a “meeting of German–American relations.” In reality, it was a more of a showcase in differences about each country’s historical imagination.
“The Dream of the Celt” succeeds at educating its readers about the worlds in which Sir Roger Casement lived his successive lives, but not about his successive personalities.
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