Featured
By Bill Marx First, I want to mention a couple of volumes that I unaccountably left off my World Books 2008 round-up of the best fiction and non-fiction candidates. No, it is not another salute to the current international fiction daring Roberto Bolaño, a fever fanned by the appearance of his huge tome “2666” in…
Read Moreby Gary Schwartz A few months ago a good friend, someone whose judgment I could not respect more highly, asked me to help convince the Rijksmuseum not to give Damien Hirst the run of the place with his exhibition “For the love of God.” She was understandably incensed by the whole business. That the cast…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx On this week’s podcast I talk to Peter Filkins, an award-winning translator who walked into a Harvard Square bookstore, picked up an obscure novel written in German and, after reading a few pages, recognized that he had stumbled onto literary gold. Written in 1950, published in 1962, the book was one of…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb Who stands at the top of the American musical theatre? Many people will at once cite Rodgers & Hammerstein. They were indeed illustrious collaborators, and produced eleven works for the stage starting in 1943. But only four of these are top-notch: “Oklahoma!,” “Carousel,” “South Pacific,” and “The King and I.” The master…
Read More“White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War Was Fought on the Chess Board” By Daniel Johnson. Houghton Miffilin, 384 pages, $26 Reviewed by Harvey Blume The book’s thesis about the Cold War is that chess was nothing less than sublimated war between the US and the USSR. For something that is neither war,…
Read MoreNorman R. Shapiro took on the Herculean task of translating the 17th century French poet’s work—some 240 poems in all—in increments of fifties. He has performed the difficult task with wit and panache.
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Translator and poet David Hinton in the midst of nature. On this week’s World Books podcast I talk to David Hinton, an award-winning translator of classical Chinese poetry and philosophy. His latest book, which Hinton translated and edited, is “Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology” from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. The wonderfully rich…
Read Moreby Bill Marx “Writing in the Dark” By David Grossman. Translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen Farrar, Straus Giroux, 131 pages, $18 Israeli novelist David Grossman fears his country is losing its soul. In this stirring but slim collection essays on the intersection of politics and literature by celebrated Israeli novelist David (“See Under:…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb The scientist Spalanzani (tenor Neal Ferreira) strikes an unlikely deal with the nefarious inventor Coppélius (baritone Gaétan Laperrière) in the BLO’s fine production of “Tales of Hoffmann.” One of history’s most famous and beloved French operas wasn’t written by a native Frenchman. “The Tales of Hoffmann” came from the pen of Jacques…
Read More
Jazz Perspective: Zev Feldman – A Sherlock of a Producer with an Impressive Portfolio