Books
One feels when reading this anthology of Latin American poetry that editor Ilan Stavans tucks each poet he features into a folder, but that this categorization, while limiting, also encourages an English-speaking readership to appreciate the eye-opening diversity of Latin American poetry.
In The Life of an Unknown Man Andreï Makine creates a work of simple elegance that at its core explores the relationship of the past to the present, of truth to art, and of truth to life.
Given the flood of publications on early modern natural history over the last two decades, the detailed and strikingly illustrated Picturing the Book of Nature represents a herculean undertaking.
Into the Garden with Charles reads like a great love letter: beautifully written, full of feeling, a document of an intimate connection that never lost its wonder for the author.
Of the major 20th-century writers in English, Patrick White stands with the best, partly because he refused to repeat himself, and partly because he refuses to tell you everything, so that when you read him there is a sense of discovery.
Judging by the trailer for The Great Gatsby, it looks as if director Baz Luhrmann’s habitual excess will overwhelm the lyrical beauty and subtle power of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s prose.
The poetry of Palestinian author Ghassan Zaqtan dwells in the space between life and death, memory and erasure, respite and continuous travel.
As sorry as I was to lose Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes last week, I was nonetheless deeply pleased that he reached the age of 83. I almost killed him when he was 37.
The Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll at Mid-Year: Warming Up a Riff — How It Happened, and Why It Matters