Ludwig Hohl belongs in the line of such lucidly contentious thinkers as Karl Kraus, Pascal, and Lichtenberg, commentators whose writing oscillates between the traditions of literature and philosophy.
World Books
Book Review: “Strange Beasts of China” — An Exuberant Chinese Fantasy
The volume’s spirited imagination is strong enough to compensate for flaws in its translation.
Poetry Review: “Outside” — Poetry and Prose of French Writer André du Bouchet.
Take the poems slowly, enjoy the Cage-y silences, the concentrated words as they appear.
Poetry Review: Poems, Not Artifacts — “New Poets of Native Nations” and a “Poets Playlist” at the Peabody
Editor Heidi E. Erdrich has brought together a richly varied selection of poems, chosen from first collections of poetry written by twenty-one Native poets since the year 2000.
Book Review: “To the Back of Beyond” — Extreme Ambiguity
Evidently, plain-spoken language plus doubt and apprehension equate to novels that, once opened, are very hard to put down.
Book Interview: Thomas Kitson on a Neglected Gem of Russian Modernism
Iliazd is more interested in working through all the possible reasons that generate behavior rather than grappling with issues of morality.
Book Review: “Our Dead World” — Testaments to the Never Quite Absent
Bolivian author Liliana Colanzi delivers some risky, but important, messages in these enigmatic stories.
Book Review: “Rapture” — Modernism, Daredevil Style
Rapture is a worthwhile curio that grapples, entertainingly, with Modernism’s artistic, structural, and revolutionary quandaries.
Book Review: Polish Poet Czesław Miłosz — Master of the Telling Detail
For a reader without the reference points of mid-twentieth century Lithuania and Poland, this deeply researched biography can be a slog.
Book Review: Gershom Scholem — A Rich and Complicated Jewish Life
George Prochnik’s biography of Gershom Scholem is flawed, but well worth reading, especially for those struggling with their Jewish and Israeli identities.