book-reviews
An appreciation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most personal novel, in which a marriage’s collapse becomes a searching exploration of love, ambition, and the courage to begin again.
These new children’s books explore different aspects of fall—starting school, understanding yourself, and Indigenous storytelling.
Book Review: The King of the Cats Returns — Seamus Heaney’s Complete Poems and the Poetry of Justice
In a monumental new gathering of his work, the Nobel laureate’s poems—of rural labor, private grief, history, and divided Northern Ireland—remain a moral force in a newly fraught moment.
Elizabeth Howard talks to “Book Post” editor and critic Ann Kjellberg about the value of literary criticism as a form of sustained reflection.
If you’re a fan of the podcast or the magazine, you know that Arts Fuse writers are sworn adversaries of the dreaded algorithm.
Why does Laura Miller feel, given her belief that negative reviews are often useless, that she has to kick criticism while it is down? Why argue against the efforts of a small number of delusional reviewers in major publications who continue to speak fruitless negativity to the indifferent masses?
“New York Times” Book Critic Dwight Garner makes salient points about the need for incisive criticism, claiming that too much happy talk denies common sense and undercuts credibility. But the ‘gonzo’ masterwork “Fire the Bastards!” hammers the point home much more memorably.
By Bill Marx Sigmund Freud sets out a weirdly Brobdingnagian survival scenario for kids. Young children rely on their parents, dependent on the intimidating bounty and emotional whims of “adult” giants who could easily dish out too much smothering love or unconscious hostility. Novelist Peter Stephan Jungk weaves a playfully tragicomic variation on this primal…
By Bill Marx In the latest World Books podcast I talk to Robert Chandler, who along with his wife Elizabeth and Olga Meerson has translated Andrey Platonov’s novel “The Foundation Pit” for New York Review Books.
Arts Commentary: With Friends Like These — The New York Times Explains Why Criticism Matters
The important question the NYTBR Editors fail to ask is whether the traditional definition and values of literary criticism will survive in an age of ebooks and iPads. Is there a primal appetite for criticism? (Edith Wharton says there is, and I believe her.) How will the Internet shape our innate desire to compare, judge,…
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