Category: american-literature
- 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
- 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
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View Other Essays by Topic
aging (127)American literature (226)art (123)Buddhism (171)Christianity (132)creative process (262)death and dying (144)meditation (125)movies (167)music (42)race (110)religion (196)sex (187)spirituality (174)the art of narrative (266)Uncategorized (21)world literature (23)