Month: June 2011
The wily Enrique Vila-Matas remains wary but respectful of Ernest Hemingway and asserts his independence by going on his own self-consciously vaudevillian way—Juan Gabriel Vásquez is too subservient to elude the shadow of Joseph Conrad.
Read MoreNothing would please me more than to believe the announcement made last week by the Van Gogh Museum, saying that one of the paintings in the museum that has always been called a self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh is in fact a portrait of his brother Theo
Read MoreThis was ensemble playing by two people who knew not only the music, but each other completely. There are some things you can’t fake, and one is ensemble playing with a person — or people — you love. (I speak from experience here). Everything was perfect.
Read MoreJuly is a month when most of the great classical music is happening in pastoral settings and festivals around New England and far from Boston.
Read MoreThe theme of fading passion would have been enough. It is the theme of many a love story. It would have been enough for this chess story. But author Robert R. Desjarlais won’t let it be enough.
Read MoreCamille Pissarro lived to be 73. As he aged, he looked more and more like the prototype of a Sephardic Jew. Anti-Semitic rioting accompanied the Dreyfus Affair; the painter found it prudent to stay inside his hotel room in Paris.
Read MoreTime travel in movies, whether treated as farce or serious sci-fi mind-bending, sometimes excites us by challenging the idea that we’re trapped in a linear chronology from which we cannot escape, racking up regrets, mistakes, and old-age as we go
Read More