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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…
A conversation with Douglas Carlton Abrams, author of the erotically-charged novel “The Lost Diary of Don Juan: An Account of the True Arts of Passion and the Perilous Adventure of Love.” By Bill Marx Readers looking for a retread of Errol Flynn’s antics as the infamous lover will be disappointed — though not grievously so,…
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.
The Decemberists are passionate, intense and they put on one hell of a show.
Not every critic is inspired by British playwright Tom Stoppard’s epic, Tony award-winning trilogy about the trials and tribulations of the 19th century Russian radical Alexander Herzen. Download the podcast By Bill Marx I had high expectations for Tom Stoppard’s labor of love, but walked away from his bloated homage to the great Russian journalist…
During the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Gordon Matta-Clark did what many of us think might be cool, but never dare try to pull off.
Bill Marx talks with the Fogg Art Museum’s Susan Dackerman about DISSENT!, an exhibit that surveys printmaking and the history of political protest. [audio:https://artsfuse.org/podcasts/protest.mp3] DISSENT!,” an illuminating exhibition (closed) at the Harvard University Art Museums through February 25, provided some valuable insight into what it was like when protest art had some cultural clout. And…
Critical Homage: A. Alvarez — Beyond Fiddling Away
By Bill Marx Al Alvarez’s new book of essays provides an opportunity to also strongly recommend his first collection of literary commentary and reviews, 1969’s Beyond All This Fiddle, one of the most invigorating collections of cultural commentary from that period. The latest issue of the TLS features an irritatingly short review of Risky Business,…
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