Books

Book Commentary: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Jonathan Lethem’s Influences

December 16, 2011
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For all of his claims to being a subversive termite, Jonathan Lethem the puffy white elephant appears more often in this collection, trudging down a much safer, much happier road — leave the negativity to the snotty aristocrats.

Book Review: Mahmoud Darwish — Palestinian Poet of Heritage and Exile

December 14, 2011
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Mahmoud Darwish, who died in 2008 at the age of sixty-seven, was best and heroically known for his complex perspective on political and spiritual borders — as both a poet and a spokesman for his Palestinian people.

Theater Commentary: An Anything-But-Banal Love Story

December 13, 2011
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The play does not address Hannah Arendt’s rationalizations or the reasons for her dedication to Martin Heidegger, though the dramatist’s title hints that it is the banal truth of the irrationality of love.

Book Review: Losing it — Whining Against the Dying of the Light

December 8, 2011
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Losing It” explores growing old through an assemblage of tales and lessons drawn from works of the past—the Icelandic Sagas, the classics, the Bible, the Torah—to which the author adds a plenitude of his own dicta and pensées, slinging the whole contraption together on a webbing of extrapolation and free association.

The Annual Arts Fuse Holiday Gift Roundup — Tips From the Experts

December 5, 2011
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Wondering about what to give the arts and culture lover on your gift list? No problem — the sage writers for The Arts Fuse (with an assist from our readers) come to the rescue with thoughtful suggestions.

Theater Interview: The Arrival of “The Snow Queen”

December 3, 2011
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Along with its puppets and spectacle, “The Snow Queen” gives the audience a chance to become part of the action. Kids of all ages are invited to put down their electronic toys and enter a fanciful — rather than frenzied — theatrical world.

Arts Interview: Cutting Across Mathematics and the Arts — Talking With The Man Who Knows Galileo’s Muse

December 1, 2011
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We need the humanities because we need imagination that works outside the narrow channels where the sciences succeed.

Book Review: An Outstanding “List”

November 30, 2011
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Although he has set himself an ambitious task with all that is happening in “The List,” Martin Fletcher has complete command of this material and has created a complex novel that is also a good thriller.

Book Review: A Brave New Perspective on the Arts and Sciences — “Galileo’s Muse”

November 29, 2011
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“Galileo’s Muse” is a gem of a book: shedding new light on a figure as well-examined as Galileo is no simple task. Author Mark Peterson does so with aplomb, while also telling a fascinating story of the evolution of mathematics and the arts.

Book Review: Haruki Murakami — Marathon Storyteller

November 27, 2011
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In his dozen or so works of international best-selling fiction, Haruki Murakami has created an alternate-reality Japan that is at once magical and familiar, dangerous and comfortable, foreign but Westernized.

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