The personas and poetics of five new books by American women are examined in with an eye toward concealment and of revelation: Matthea Harvey, Katy Lederer, Brenda Shaugnessey, Robyn Schiff, and Karen Volkman.
The most famous fictional creation this side of Tarzan has undergone innumerable changes over the years, and author Tom DeHaven tries to chart them all in his new book on the Man of Steel.
… I don’t mind the missing violin; /
I am sweetly imbibing a foreign /
fortitude: nothing terrible /
will happen this hour or the previous… /
Mikhail Chekhov’s Anton Chekhov: A Brother’s Memoir has at last been published in English in its entirety, and its flaws and omissions make it almost as revealing as one of Anton’s own stories.
The jewel-like perfection of Thornton Wilder’s “The Bridge of San Luis Rey” is the subject of Ingrid Norton’s scrutiny in this latest installment of “The Year of Short Novels”
There is not a false note in Paganini’s Ghost, Paul Adam’s superbly calibrated mystery that unfolds around the intrigue generated by a priceless instrument and its keepers.
The nation’s book critics naturally congregated when Don DeLillo’s slim new book appeared. In the latest Open Letters Peer Review, John Rodwan supplies a scorecard for the players.
In mythology, Alcestis is the model wife, willing to give up her own life for her husband’s. In Katharine Beutner’s lyrical retelling, the truth is more complex.
Louis Menand has offered a calm and lucid response to the usual jeremiads about higher education–but is its lecture targeted to an ever-shrinking audience?
“My ideal poem would be able to be interpreted as both funny and sad and whatever else….” Shafer trailed off. “I think that’s a fairly accurate description of my work, and probably of myself too.”
Unlike its predecessor, Mass Effect 2 makes being a jerk a rewarding experience–Phillip A. Lobo explores the paradoxes of the Enlightenment, and the complicated morality of being bad.
Donald Windham may not have intended his 1965 novel Two People to be trailblazing, but its unsentimental frankness set it apart just the same. Philip Gambone reads it again.
He was a soldier, a lover, an exile, and a wanderer – he was Ugo Foscolo,and thanks to a new translation, readers will learn he was one thing more: a powerful poet.
The elephants of South Africa and the right whales of the North Atlantic are enormous, complex – and confronted with a growing human population. Two books estimate their chances.
The latest novels by Francisco X. Stork and Benjamin Alire Saenz remind us that there’s much, much more to teen fiction than vampire fads.
Justin Taylor’s Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever raises the age-old question about ‘hot’ new collections: can they possibly live up to their own billing? Janet Potter turns in a verdict.
Giambattista Tiepolo spent a lifetime fulfilling contracts and covering walls with glowing celebrations of light and life. In Tiepolo Pink, Roberto Calasso delves into those bright works.
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