Books
By Tess Lewis This masterful new novel sees heresy and idealism as the warp and woof of history. Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick. (Houghton Mifflin) Little in Cynthia Ozick’s books is predictable or simple. Her sinuous essays are, as she says, “thing[s] of the imagination,” “the movement of a free mind…
Read MoreAn indispensable new biography of Broadway legend Jerome Robbins reevaluates his life and work.
Read MoreCritic Susan Sontag asks whether repeated exposure to images of violence makes us less sensitive to human suffering. Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag. (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 144 pages) By Bill Marx The controversy over whether images of American POWs held by Iraqi forces should be broadcast on television testifies to the…
Read MoreA biography that examines, with mixed results, the life and work of Thomas Bernhard, an acclaimed Austrian writer and playwright his homeland loved to hate.
Read More“The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan” provides literate entertainment and cautionary tales about what happens to a critic when the will-to-celebrity triumphs over the urge-to-critique. The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan Edited by John Lahr. Bloomsbury, 439 pages. By Bill Marx Kenneth Tynan’s descent from brilliance to muddle is a fable for theater critics, a cautionary tale…
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Arts Remembrance: In Memoriam — Tom Stoppard