Category: american-literature
- Present at the CreationWolf: A False Memoir by Jim Harrison. Delta. 225 pp. Having just made my way chronologically through the novels of Toni Morrison—an experience I’m still digesting—it occurred to me that I might do the same with Jim Harrison. I once wrote, “I sometimes think I could sit down and read through his entire oeuvre, all thirty ...Read more
- Too Close to HomeEmily, Alone a novel by Stewart O’Nan. Penguin Books. 255 pp. $17.00 I picked up this book because a friend of my brother told him it was set in “our Pittsburgh.” I couldn’t believe the extent to which that is true. The aging widow Emily Maxwell does not live quite in my neighborhood, but close enough, ...Read more
- Closing the BookHome a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 145 pp. $14.95 *** God Help the Child a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 178 pp. $14.95 *** Last April, having seen Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, I resolved to read all of her novels, in order of composition. It’s taken a ...Read more
- Women Without MenA Mercy a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 196 pp. $15.95 I have felt adrift in Toni Morrison novels before—at some point in every book I’ve read—but never right at the beginning as in A Mercy. It begins with a short section in first person, and I had no idea what was going on, almost stopped ...Read more
- Hear Hear!There There a novel by Tommy Orange. Vintage. 292 pp. $16.00 ****1/2 This novel is as good as everyone says it is, and that’s saying a lot: it’s been hyped by everyone from Pam Houston (who was apparently Orange’s writing teacher) to President Obama, who has called it one of his favorite books. It is a ...Read more
- What Love?Love a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 202 pp. $15.00 I was sitting down to write about her eighth novel—I’ve been reading her work chronologically, ever since I saw Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am—when I heard the news that Toni Morrison had died, at the age of 88. At first I thought I should write ...Read more
- Too Much ThinkingCall It Grace: Finding Meaning in a Fractured World by Serene Jones. Viking. 310 pp. ***1/2 Four Men Shaking: Searching for Sanity with Samuel Beckett, Norman Mailer, and My Perfect Zen Teacher by Lawrence Shainberg. Shambhala. 134 pp. $16.95. ****1/2 “To stop your mind does not mean to stop the activities of mind. It means your mind ...Read more
- Fools’Paradise a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 318 pp. $16.00 I can agree that Beloved is Toni Morrison’s masterpiece, but in some ways I found Paradise a more inventive and intricate novel. It’s the story of a fictional town in Oklahoma that was settled in the mid-twentieth century by African Americans who had been turned away ...Read more
- Aristocrat of ConsciousnessConversations with Jim Harrison Revised and Updated Edited by Robert DeMott. University Press of Mississippi. 289 pp. $25.00 ***** Jim Harrison: The Essential Poems Edited by Joseph Bednarik. Copper Canyon Press. 229 pp. $18.00 ***** Some years ago—probably thirty, at this point—I was sitting with a bunch of book reviewers and editors in New York, celebrating the ...Read more
- Frankie and Johnny Were SweetheartsJazz a novel by Toni Morrison. Plume/Penguin. 229 pp. $11.95 As I move chronologically through Toni Morrison’s fiction and arrive at her sixth novel, I’ve come to various conclusions: I think of her as a Southern writer. Actually, she grew up on Lorain, Ohio, and never lived in the South. (Lorain, as she describes it in the ...Read more
- Beyond GreatBeloved a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 324 pp. $16.00. ***** I’ve been asking myself lately what literary greatness is, and how it comes about. Does the artist actually see and understand more than the rest of us, or does she just put it into words better? Back in the old days we talked about writers ...Read more
- Lives of Men and WomenTar Baby a novel by Toni Morrison. Plume. 306 pp. $10.95 The set-up of Tar Baby is brilliant, one of the most brilliant thing about it. Valerian and Margaret Street live six months every year in a beautiful house on an island in the Caribbean. She is his second wife, a trophy wife, we suspect, but ...Read more
- What’s In a Name?Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. Plume. 337 pp. I wrote some weeks ago that I didn’t think Toni Morrison became a great novelist with Song of Solomon; she was great from the start. Song of Solomon was nevertheless a definite step forward, with a larger theme, a richer backdrop, and a more complicated story than ...Read more
- Lives of Girls and WomenThe Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 206 pp. $14.95. Sula by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 174 pp. $15.00 After seeing the marvelous documentary, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, I immediately decided that, though I’d read four of her novels in the past, I wanted to sit down and read ...Read more
- Great American InstitutionsThe Library Book by Susan Orlean. Simon & Schuster. 319 pp. $28.00. **** You can’t judge a book by its cover, but I more or less bought this one for its cover, which looks like a book I might have gotten from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh sixty years ago. There’s even the image of a ...Read more
- Isn’t It Romantic?Cowboys Are My Weakness: Stories by Pam Houston. Norton. 165 pp. $14.95. **** “I’d love to give you a great big kiss, but I’ve got a mouth full of chew.” –from the title story I rarely pay attention to recommendations from corporate entities, but when Amazon recommended this title and I saw it was stories by a ...Read more
- Folly and MadnessAsymmetry a novel by Lisa Halliday. Simon and Schuster. 271 pp. $16.00. ***** Asymmetry is a first novel that reads like the work of an old hand. Lisa Halliday has worked as an editor and agent, and an Internet bio mentions the fact that she published one story, in 2005, but it’s hard to believe she ...Read more
- The Shammes Is a Patzer, but no ShlemielThe Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon. Harper Perennial. 411 pp. $16.99 ***** I must admit that I was slightly discouraged when I discovered that this famous novel by Michael Chabon, which I’ve anticipated reading for years, concerns an imaginary reality in which the Jews were expelled from Israel in 1948, and relocated to a section ...Read more
- Unlikely MasterAmbivalent Zen: A Memoir by Lawrence Shainberg. Pantheon. 318 pp. $24.00. ****1/2 After sesshin this year, I felt an urge to read books about Zen (usually I want to read anything but), not dharma books, but memoirs of Zen experience. First I turned to a book that only a sideways look at Zen, by a man ...Read more
- There Was a WarGrant by Ron Chernow. Penguin Press. 1074 pp. $40.00. ***** A friend of mine once told a story about General Patton, that after he died he asked St. Peter to take him back in history and show him the greatest general who ever lived. St. Peter agreed, and they traveled back in time to a small ...Read more
Recent Evening Mind Posts
You Need to be WritingThe Other SideThe River is Freedom, the Raft ParadiseThe Nothing of GodWe Are Stardust We Are Golden
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (114)American literature (197)art (109)Buddhism (163)Christianity (119)creative process (232)death and dying (128)meditation (118)movies (152)music (36)race (95)religion (180)sex (157)spirituality (167)the art of narrative (238)Uncategorized (19)world literature (23)
Print
You Need to be WritingThe Other SideThe River is Freedom, the Raft ParadiseThe Nothing of GodWe Are Stardust We Are Golden
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (114)American literature (197)art (109)Buddhism (163)Christianity (119)creative process (232)death and dying (128)meditation (118)movies (152)music (36)race (95)religion (180)sex (157)spirituality (167)the art of narrative (238)Uncategorized (19)world literature (23)