Category: art
- Mixed FeelingsThe Magus a novel by John Fowles. Back Bay Books. 656 pp. **** I can’t remember ever being as exasperated by a book that I basically liked as I was by The Magus. What I read—after my enthusiastic reading of The French Lieutenant’s Woman—was that, while that was considered his greatest novel, The Magus was his ...Read more
- The Lives of ArtistsSentimental Value a film by Joachin Trier. With Renata Reinsue, Stellan Skaargard, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning. Streaming on various platforms. ***** Sentimental Value is a movie about two great—and greatly troubled—artists. Gustav Borg (Stellan Skaargard) is an aging filmmaker who had many successes in the past but seems not to have done too well recently. ...Read more
- What Do I Call This Thing?The Flamethrowers a novel by Rachel Kushner. Scribner. 383 pp. ***** Rachel Kushner is a writer who is so riveting line by line that you forget to step back and ask yourself what you’ve been reading. Then your wife asks and you say, it’s about an art student in New York named Reno (named for the ...Read more
- Who Gets the Oscar?One Battle After Another a film by Paul Thomas Anderson. With Teyanna Taylor, Leonardo Di Caprio, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti, Benito del Toro. ***** It isn’t just that the plot of One Battle After Another, which is utterly absurd, reflects our own current situation perfectly. It isn’t just that the movie includes one great performance after ...Read more
- UnforgettableThe French Lieutenant’s Woman a novel by John Fowles. Little, Brown and Company. 467 pp. ***** The French Lieutenant’s Woman was one of the favorite novels of my friend Levi, who had read it multiple times. In fact, I believe he gave me the copy I have, for my birthday or for Christmas; like most book ...Read more
- John Wilson. Great Writer.The Pianoplayers a novel by Anthony Burgess. Arbor House. 208 pages. **** Anthony Burgess is one of my great literary heroes. Born in 1917—the same year as my father—he was a middle-aged itinerant teacher who had done some writing on the side (he’d actually published four novels; only for Burgess would that be considered a sideline) ...Read more
- A Few More Words on FaulknerStories by William Faulkner. Library of America. 1160 pp. ***** I have now, so help me God, read every word William Faulkner wrote and published, at least all the prose. I enthusiastically reviewed this book some weeks ago, and had just a couple of small sections to go. Also, I hadn’t read the first volume in ...Read more
- Charmed LifeThe Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983-1994 by Thomas Mallon. Knopf. 573 pp. $40.00. ***** It seems forever since I’ve posted on my website, but I spent much of July reading and reviewing a new biography of Peter Matthiessen for the winter issue of Tricycle. I’m also still reading bits and pieces of Faulkner ...Read more
- Over the HillThe Last Showgirl a film by Gia Coppola. Written by Kate Gersten. With Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Billie Lourd, Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka, Dave Bautista. Streaming on Amazon and Apple. ***** Shelly (Pamela Anderson) has given her life to her career as a Las Vegas showgirl, dancing in a show called Le Razzle Dazzle, which ...Read more
- Two MasterpiecesNickel Boys a film by RaMell Ross. With Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, Trey Perkins. Streaming on various platforms. ***** I felt about the movie Nickel Boys exactly the way I felt about the book; I wanted to see it but was half afraid to. There are many ways a movie could have ...Read more
- American OriginalRecollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years by Diane di Prima. Penguin Books. 424 pp. $18.00. **** In this astonishing and inspiring memoir—424 tightly packed pages full of remarkably detailed writing, which covers maybe 30 years of a hugely eventful life—there are several moments that stand out for me. One is when, ...Read more
- She Wasn’t Crazy. The World Was.The Known World a novel by Edward P. Jones. Harper Perennial. 388 pp. ***** It isn’t often that I read a novel, then sit down immediately and read it again. I wasn’t planning to do that this time. But as I pondered my previous review of The Known World, I saw structural things about the novel ...Read more
- The Critic as ArtistThe Company She Keeps and The Oasis from Mary McCarthy Novels & Stories 1942-1963. The Library of America. pp. 1-287 **** In everything I’ve read by Mary McCarthy so far, it seems that a social critic/satirist is in charge and an artist is struggling to be set free. The Company She Keeps, her first book, is ...Read more
- How to Live Your LifePerfect Days a film by Wim Wenders and Takuma Takasaki. With Koji Yakusho, Tokio Emoto. Streaming on various platforms. ***** Hirayama cleans public toilets in Tokyo (and that place has some fancy toilets. Some of them are almost futuristic). He has a small apartment where he lives in the Japanese fashion, mostly on the floor, moving ...Read more
- You Need to be WritingCrowded by Beauty: The Life and Zen of Poet Philip Whalen by David Schneider. University of California Press. 352 pp. $23.92. ***** Goods Short Stories by David Schneider. Cuke Press 168 pp. $13.00 **** Philip Whalen was what used to be called a Man of Letters, back in the days when there were such people. In fact, ...Read more
- 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
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All Shook UpWhat's in a Song? IIWriting for his LifeWhat’s in a Song?Mixed Feelings
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)