Category: american-literature
- 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
- Woman of LettersCan You Ever Forgive Me? a film by Marielle Heller. With Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant, Dolly Wells, Anna Deavere Smith. ****1/2 I’ve always been a fan of Melissa McCarthy; I think she’s pretty, funny, sexy, and is one of those actors who lights up the screen the moment she appears, especially in Bridesmaids, the first movie ...Read more
- Saul Learning to BellowThe Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. Penguin Classics. 586 pp. $17.00 ****1/2 When I was a teenager in Pittsburgh in the Sixties, I made up my mind that I wanted to be a writer (without telling anybody, in case I failed), and set about trying to educate myself. The writers we studied at school ...Read more
- Why Books Are Better Than MoviesThe Wife a novel by Meg Wolitzer. Simon and Schuster. 219 pp. $16.00. **** They aren’t always better. The Godfather is a case in point, though it was a better book than it gets credit for. But The Wife is a much better book than movie not ...Read more
- Right Star, Wrong PrizeThe Wife a film by Bjorn Runge. With Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce, Max Irons, Christian Slater. ***1/2 The reason to see this movie is for the performances, especially the one by Glenn Close, but also Max Irons and Christian Slater. Jonathan Pryce plays a nebbish named Joe Castleman and does a creditable job, but the man ...Read more
- You’ve Just Paid the Artist a Wonderful ComplimentNow Go to Hell I wrote recently about Samuel R. Delany’s Dark Reflections, a novel in which Delany seems completely present, but has given himself another life. Instead of being a science fiction writer, Arnold Hawley is a poet. Instead of living in New York and teaching at Temple, he lives in New York and teaches ...Read more
- Full and StarvingHunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay. Harper Perennial. 306 pp. $16.99. **** I’ll never look at a fat person the same way again. I use the word fat because that’s the word Roxane Gay uses; in fact she insists on it. She doesn’t like the euphemisms for her situation. She tells it like it ...Read more
- Portrait of the Artist as a Befuddled Old ManDark Reflections by Samuel R. Delany. Carroll & Graf. 295 pp. $15.95. ***** There’s nobody quite like Samuel R. Delany, and every now and then I have to read one of his books, often one I’ve read before (this is either my third or fourth time with Dark Reflections). He had an early career as a ...Read more
- Stumble He DidThe Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered Buddha by Stephen T. Asma. HarperOne. 256 pp. $14.99 ***1/2 Talk about your feeble excuses for reading a book: I was getting my computer worked on when I noticed this book on a nearby work desk. I picked it up and flipped through ...Read more
- The Other Side of AddictionNow What? Reading Sabbath’s Theater has gotten me started on the subject of addiction again. I’ve read books about sex maniacs before, I’ve even written one, but never have I come across a character like Mickey Sabbath, who masturbates on his mistress’ grave, showed up at her house (when he was alive) with an erection already ...Read more
- AddictSabbath’s Theater from Novels 1993-1995 by Philip Roth. Library of America. 842 pp. ****1/2 Where does all the bitterness come from? I kept asking myself as I read this—brilliant, in many ways—novel by Philip Roth. I understand that Roth was creating a character, that he was speaking through that character, that Mickey Sabbath is not Philip ...Read more
- Not Quite PersuadedThe Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer. Riverhead. 456 pp. $28.00 **** When I heard that Meg Wolitzer had written the first #MeToo novel, I figured that either the woman was prescient or just writes very quickly. The Female Persuasion does open with a classic #MeToo moment: the protagonist, Greer Kadetsky, has only just gotten to Ryland ...Read more
- Prison Is When You Can’t Get OutThe Mars Room by Rachel Kushner. Scribner. 338 pp. $27.00. ***** A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. Viking. 462 pp. $27.00 **** “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.” –Mephistopheles, in Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. Rachel Kushner writes at a different level of intensity from the rest of us. She’s one of those ...Read more
- Limits of MemoryAusterlitz by W.G. Sebald. Modern Library. 298 pp. $17.00. ***** Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. Harper. 264 pp. $27.99. ***1/2 The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout. Bantam. 178 pp. $7.99. **** Austerlitz presents an interesting aesthetic question. It’s told by one man (named Austerlitz) to another, who narrates the novel. I first bought the book because it included ...Read more
- Murder Will Out. And Then SomeThe Secret History by Donna Tartt. Vintage. 559 pp. $16.95 **** The first thing to say about The Secret History is that it is a drunk novel. Not since the days of Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Hemingway have I read a book where so much booze is consumed, at such odd hours and so unwisely. I’m not ...Read more
- Evil Is in the DoingAll the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. Scribner. 530 pp. $17.00 ***** All the Light We Cannot See is so unusual a novel that it’s hard to know how to write about it. Compounding my difficulties is the fact that it’s been a couple of weeks since I finished it, but events (mostly basketball ...Read more
- The Deep BlueManhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan. Scribner. 438 pp. ***1/2 I was wildly enthusiastic about Jennifer Egan’s previous novel, A Visit from the Good Squad. That book was aesthetically stunning, every chapter from a different point of view, a narrative that was wildly distorted in time, a set of characters that only vaguely related to one another ...Read more
- To NowhereOn the Road from Road Novels 1957-1960 by Jack Kerouac. Edited by Douglas Brinkley. Library of America. 864 pp. It’s an odd feeling to reread On the Road after just reading The Dharma Bums for the first time. In a way it’s the same book all over again, Jack Kerouac on a mad dash around the ...Read more
- Drunken SaintThe Dharma Bums from Road Novels 1957-1960 by Jack Kerouac. Edited by Douglas Brinkley. Library of America. 864 pp. ***1/2 Jack Kerouac is the spiritual father of every whacked-out hippie who ever stumbled his way through the Sixties, head bobbing in mild agreement, mouth perpetually grinning, a beard flowing around his collar. Kerouac himself was a ...Read more
- Choosing LifeThe Light That Shines Through Infinity: Zen and the Energy of Life by Dainin Katagiri. Shambhala. 229 pp. $16.95. Jesus’ Son Stories by Denis Johnson. Picador. 133 pp. $15.00 It was unnerving for me to read Denis Johnson’s excellent but disturbing book of stories at the same time I was reading the new book of lectures by ...Read more
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View Other Essays by Topic
aging (114)American literature (198)art (110)Buddhism (163)Christianity (120)creative process (232)death and dying (128)meditation (118)movies (153)music (36)race (95)religion (181)sex (158)spirituality (168)the art of narrative (238)Uncategorized (19)world literature (23)