Category: art
- Pandemic Without PanicThe Vulnerables a novel by Sigrid Nunez. Riverhead Books. 242 pp. **** Early reviewers of Sigrid Nunez’ The Vulnerables are linking it to her most recent novels (The Friend, which won a National Book Award, and What Are You Going Through, which was equally deserving of that award), seeing the three books as a trilogy. The ...Read more
- Quotations from my Reading (cont.)From Septology by Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse, a Catholic convert. “it’s in the darkness that God lives, yes, God is darkness, and that darkness, God’s darkness, that nothingness, yes, it shines, yes, it’s from God’s darkness that the light comes, the invisible light . . . “I don’t understand why it’s at night, in the darkness, ...Read more
- William Kennedy’s Big BookChango Beads and Two-Tone Shoes a novel by William Kennedy. Viking. 326 pp. ***** In an interview in mid-career, William Kennedy talked about his career as a journalist and his decision to begin writing fiction, and to concentrate on the city he had moved away from, but then returned to take care of his father. Someone ...Read more
- Call It What You Want. I Call It Great.A Thousand and One a film by A.V. Rockwell. With Teyana Taylor, William Catlett, Aaron Kingsley Adetola, Aven Courtney, Josiah Cross. Streaming on Prime and other platforms. ***** A Thousand and One is the best movie I’ve seen in years. It focuses on the black underclass—a group I need to learn about—but isn’t about pimps, whores, ...Read more
- The Family PhelanVery Old Bones a novel by William Kennedy. Viking. 292 pp. $22.00 When we read Ironweed, about a man—Francis Phelan—who accidentally kills his infant son and then, in shame, becomes a hobo for the rest of his life; or Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, about that man’s son, who lives as a gambler and numbers writer who ...Read more
- What Strikes Fear into Every Man’s Heart?Women Talking a film by Sarah Polley. With Rooney Mara, Judith Ivey, Emily Mitchell, Kate Hallett. Streaming on Apple TV. ***** Reflections on a Movie In Women Talking, a group of women finally gets together to talk about the things nobody has been saying. It is based on a novel about Miriam Toews, and borrows its premise ...Read more
- War Is AbsurdThe Banshees of Inisherin a film by Martin McDonagh. With Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan. Streaming on HBO Max. **** I can’t remember ever saying this before, but I enjoyed thinking about this movie more than actually watching it. The watching was sometimes excruciating, especially because my wife kept jumping up and leaving ...Read more
- Portrait of the Artist as a MegalomaniacTar a film by Todd Field. With Cate Blanchett, Noemie Merlat, Nina Hoss. In theaters and available for an arm and a leg on Prime Video. Well worth the money. ***** Tar begins brilliantly, with its protagonist Lydia Tar (Cate Blanchett) calming herself for a performance, fidgeting, doing special breathing and relaxation exercises, readying herself in ...Read more
- It Ain’t WorkThis Is How I Spend My Holidays My family and I just spent a week in Pittsburgh. The purpose of the visit for me was to see my brother and his wife, to re-engage in the conversation that he and I have been having for the last sixty years or so, taking up where we left ...Read more
- Far Out, ManTripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book from Maxine Hong Kingston Library of America. Viet Thanh Nguyen, editor. pp 479-864. **** This novel, published in 1989, is the quintessential Sixties novel (and seems to be the only novel that Maxine Hong Kingston has published, though she was a famous writer by the time it came out, having published ...Read more
- Pass the BottleAll My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers a novel by Larry McMurtry. Liveright. 277pp. $15.95 **** Everybody loves a story about a fuck-up. When you read about a guy who is as likely to spend the night on a couch in the university library as he is in his bed at home (he has a ...Read more
- The Mario Puzo SolutionErasure by Percival Everett. Graywolf Press. 265pp. $16.00 ***** For much of my reading of Erasure, I thought it was a sad novel at the heart of which—as a novel within a novel—was a wicked satire. By the end, really just the last couple of pages, I realized the whole thing was a wicked satire. Yet ...Read more
- Faulkner at his Knottiest(The Faulkner Project) Go Down, Moses from Faulkner Novels 1942-1954 Library of America pp. 1-281 ***** I had an odd thought when I began this novel, the thirteenth in my survey of Faulkner’s work: This is the real Faulkner. It’s a strange thing to say about a man who had already written four or five masterpieces, ...Read more
- Caught Between Two Worlds(The Faulkner Project) Light in August from Faulkner Novels 1930-1935. Library of America. pp. 399-774. ***** Of Faulkner’s great novels, this is the one I like the least. I don’t believe I’d previously read it more than once, though I was shocked at how much of it I remembered, including whole paragraphs and sentences that stuck ...Read more
- Signifying Everything(The Faulkner Project) The Sound and the Fury from Faulkner Novels 1926-1929 Library of America pp. 877-1141. ***** I think of this as Faulkner’s greatest novel, which means that no one in America has written a better one. If there is a Great American Novel (there isn’t), this is it. This is my fifth or sixth reading ...Read more
- Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go(The Faulkner Project) Soldiers’ Pay a novel by William Faulkner. Library of America William Faulkner, Novels 1926-1929. pp. 1-257. ***1/2 I’ve always been haunted by the fact that my father read Faulkner at the end of his life. He was only 47 when he died, and had had leukemia for six years; in the final years ...Read more
- Hem IIIHemingway | The Blank Page | 1944-1961 a film by Ken Burns and Kim Novick. Streaming on PBS **** The Sun Also Rises & Other Writings 1918-1926 by Ernest Hemingway. Library of America. 850 pp. ***** There’s nothing about the writing or production values that makes this third episode of Hemingway not as good as the others, ...Read more
- Hem IIHemingway: The Avatar (1929-1944) A film by Ken Burns and Kim Novick. Available on PBS Streaming. ***** Once again, in this second episode, I was stuck by Hemingway’s youth (he was already calling himself Papa in 1929, at the age of thirty). By the end of this episode he’s just 45 years old, and he’s already ...Read more
- Portrait of the Artists Through a Boozy HazeEarly Novels and Stories by James Baldwin: Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, Another Country. Library of America. 970 pp. In the midst of the endless current theorizing about race and sexuality and gender identity, and talk of all the books we must read (I hate to be told I must read a book), ...Read more
- Alice’s GazeLosing Alice a series by Sigan Avin. On Apple TV. With Ayelet Zurer, Lihi Kornowski, Gal Toren. **** Losing Alice is one of the stranger things I’ve ever seen on a screen. It’s a movie about the creative process, the artistic careers of women and men, and the lengths to which people will go to create ...Read more
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The River is Freedom, the Raft ParadiseThe Nothing of GodWe Are Stardust We Are GoldenA State of the Union and a State of MindEmbodied Mystic
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (114)American literature (195)art (108)Buddhism (162)Christianity (119)creative process (230)death and dying (128)meditation (117)movies (152)music (36)race (94)religion (179)sex (156)spirituality (166)the art of narrative (236)Uncategorized (19)world literature (23)