Art
POETRY: Body and Soul
"They say, we're one man short, but can we use this boy,
he's only fifteen years old, and at least he'll make a game." MORE...
Who Reads Poetry?
It is a common urban legend that the only ones who read poetry are poets and critics, and the only ones who write it are faculty who teach it. MORE...
BOOKS: Caribou Island
September means early winter on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula. It is not a good time to start building a small log cabin on Skilak Lake's largest island…especially for Gary and Irene who know nothing about building anything and whose thirty year marriage is washing up on the rocks. David Vann's first novel, "Caribou Island," is the story of a family unraveling in the very heart of Alaska's dramatic topography and bad weather. It begins with Irene's memory of her mother's suicide and ends with an equally gruesome act of hopelessness and despondency. MORE...
Cold Shot To The Heart
The biggest Mafia bust in New York history filled the headlines last month. Of the 127 bad guys cuffed, not just a few came from across the border in New Jersey. What I know about the Jersey mob comes only slightly from an occasional Sopranos show or the back story to a Springsteen song…but mostly from the crisp crime fiction of Wallace Stroby. MORE...
2010: A Good Year for (Obscure) Writers
Writers…can't do with 'em and can't do without 'em. Somebody has to put the stories together in ways that entertain and enlighten us. Some writers just sit down at their keyboards and start typing. Some scribble old-school style with paper and pencil. Some cut and paste from journals and aborted novels. Some are old folks. Some are just kids. Some go to school to learn the trade. Some go to school to teach the trade. Some blog, apparently contented, but secretly longing to see their work in a "real" book – selected, packaged, and promoted by a "real" publisher. Some want to make the New York Times bestseller list. Some dream of a Nobel, or Pulitzer, or National Book Award. Some just want to make a living writing. All the good ones can't help themselves from writing. MORE...
BOOKS: “Life” and “Letters” for The Holidays
Growing old…it happens to the best of us, none quite so memorably as Eliot's Prufrock wearing the bottoms of his trousers rolled and slobbering peach juice down his shirt. Well, there is no Prufockian shuffling about in two memoirs dancing at the top of this year’s holiday gift book lists. Keith Richard’s “Life” and Saul Bellow’s “Letters” are, instead, entertaining stories about two twentieth century giants in literature and music who lived hard and aged gracefully…and never lost sight of their art. MORE...
It’s Got to Be Here Somewhere
Nearly every day of the last week, I have taken some time to search through my house for a book which I am sure I not only have read and but also own. It's got to be here somewhere. For the longest time Michael Cunningham's "The Hours" was on the bottom shelf of a bookcase in what we used to call the "computer room" (until we found a different room more comfortable for computer work). Then I moved it because another book needed that shelf place to rest beside several by the same author. The Cunningham is not on the shelves with my more recent purchases. It's not in the guest room where the not-so-good books go. It's not in the entryway, the primo location for some of my favorites. I don't know where it is - I don't lend my books, so it's got to be here somewhere. MORE...
BOOKS: By Nightfall
Their twenty year marriage, their loft in SoHo, his gallery in Chelsea, her money starved arts and culture magazine, their sullen Tufts drop-out bartender daughter, his childhood in Milwaukee blended with hers in an old Virginia manse, their accomplished middle-age marital sex, his parenthetical observations including subtle references to literature and art – this is the backdrop to Peter and Rebecca Harris's story in Michael Cunningham's new novel "By Nightfall." MORE...
BOOKS: Freedom’s Just Another Word For . . . Depressing
Jonathan Franzen’s new bestselling novel “Freedom” is a long book, both in absolute page count and also in the word count on each page. It is also a slow book. The writing is dense with long paragraphs of description and dialogue. The point of view changes as Franzen moves about in irregular chapters and sections. Scenes are repeated. The setting shifts from Minnesota to Jersey City to Washington D.C. to West Virginia to Westchester County to Buenos Aires to…well, there’s even a cross-country road trip thrown in. “Freedom” clearly covers a lot of territory. MORE...
BOOKS: The Cookbook Collector
It was only a decade ago when our country, no the whole world, was flying along in an economic fantasyland where kids just out of college (or never in college) were creating Internet and technology companies that other kids on Wall Street were taking public before the first dime of profit hit their bottom lines. MORE...
RR: Are you playing Monopoly on the iPad?
CF: Yep and I’m playing the Italian way. Making all my money in jail.
Follow
Subscribe
I want my Week Behind!our staff
recommends...