Books
By Bill Marx Fiction in translation deserves all the notice it can get, but it doesn’t do anyone any good to patronize writers and readers by duplicating the happy talk that is turning people off of blurb-ridden book reviews in the mainstream media. My friend Chad Post, formerly at Dalkey Archive Press, has begun a…
By Bill Marx In his critically acclaimed novels and stories, Japanese writer Haruki Murakami sings of the subterranean connections between software and the supernatural. After Dark (Knopf, 191 pp, $22.95) Haruki Murakami is a hip cultural diagnostician who would like to be viewed as a melancholic poet of the postmodern condition, a writer who has…
Bill Marx speaks with award-winning American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. Also, dancing away at the video arcade. Download Part I and Part II of this interview with Suzan-Lori Parks.
A memoir by one of the world’s few savants is thoroughly rewarding.
In the first installment of “Condition Critical,” Bill Marx speaks with the author best known for his wryly written non-fiction books. By Bill Marx Welcome to the first installment of “Condition Critical.” This podcast (no longer available) kicks off the first in an ambitious effort to create intelligent and passionate cultural coverage online. To do…
By Bill Marx Since it is the innovators who make up the real history of the novel, Milan Kundera muses on the increasing tenuousness of this tradition of eccentric innovation. He also charts how the new arises from a collision between forgetting and remembering images of the past. The Curtain: An Essay in Seven…
Edgar Degas once said that painting should be akin to committing a crime. And many Americans saw creation of some of the most important works of American art as just that—roguish, cunning and wicked—in short, criminal. Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture by Michael Kammen. Penguin Random House, 480 pages, $18.…
In her latest project, Pulitzer prize-winning dramatist Suzan-Lori Parks covers the country. By Jared Craig Four years ago, Suzan-Lori Parks set out to do what no dramatist, no matter how prolific, has ever done before. The Pulitzer prize-winning playwright decided to write a play for each day of the year. Her mission completed, the scripts…
“The Children’s Hospital” by Chris Adrian. (McSweeney’s) By Adrienne LaFrance Chris Adrian looks familiar because he looks ordinary. Dressed simply in khakis and a wrinkled, white Oxford shirt, he speaks just loudly enough to be heard and smiles only with his mouth closed. His calm restraint– like that of a monk or a surgeon– naturally…
A new novel focuses on the plight of a young deaf woman who is trying to track down a man who stole her identity. “Talk Talk” by T.C Boyle. (Viking) By Lisa Weisstuch What strikes terror into the heart of society changes over time. Consider the panic the atomic bomb set off in the 1950s…
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