Books

Book Review: “Open Throat” — Animal Talk

June 28, 2023
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It’s really a feat — to meld the imaginary with the truth, but Open Throat does it just smashingly.

Author Interview: Historian Ibram X. Kendi on Two New Versions of “Stamped From the Beginning”

June 22, 2023
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This month has seen the publication of two new versions of Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped From the Beginning: a revised edition, which is slated for adaptation by Netflix, and a graphic history, which was illustrated by Joel Christian Gill.

Book Review: “Betye Saar: Heart of a Wanderer” — Sort of a Shaman

June 22, 2023
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Betye Saar’s assemblages and travel sketchbooks are rich in references and symbols; they are mysterious and introspective, more spiritual than political.

Book Review: “My Last Innocent Year” — Too Unreliable?

June 21, 2023
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An unreliable narrator is a tough row to hoe for a fiction writer, but a narrator who doesn’t quite know what to think — that’s even harder ground to plow.

Book Review: “Happy Forever” — An Entertaining Oral History of the Turtles and the World of Pop Music

June 18, 2023
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This offbeat bio of Turtles vocalist, songwriter, and clown prince Mark Volman has been assembled from amusing, insightful, horrifying, honest, and candidly told stories from friends, family, and even some foes.

Book Review: “Chain-Gang All-Stars” — A Terrifying Future World

June 17, 2023
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In this novel Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah creates a terrifying future world. I’m glad that he chose to anchor that creation so powerfully in the shameful present.

Poetry Review: Robert Desnos’s “Night of Loveless Nights” — Far From Ephemeral

June 16, 2023
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A reprint from 50 years ago, this small book brings to the English-speaking world a strategic introduction to the work of a major French poet of the twentieth century.

Visual Arts Feature: Fluxus Artist Nye Ffarrabas Turns 91 — Celebrating “The Friday Book of White Noise”

June 16, 2023
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Nye Ffarrabas and others in Fluxus created intermedia events that pushed the boundaries of prevailing norms in painting, sculpture, poetry, music, architecture, and theater.

Book Review: Nathan Go’s “Forgiving Imelda Marcos” — The Price of Broken Relationships

June 15, 2023
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Nathan Go’s debut novel is entertaining, emotionally resonant, and raises provocative questions about forgiveness, redemption, and love.

Book Review: “My Stupid Intentions” — The Heartbreaking Bildungsroman of a Beech Marten

June 13, 2023
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The fox knows many things in My Stupid Intentions. The beech marten just one.

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