Category: art
- They Can’t Get StartedShtisel a Netflix series (2 seasons of 12 episodes) by Along Zingman. With Doval’e Glickman, Michael Alom, Neta Riskin, Shira Haas, Zohar Shtrauss. ***** Like everyone else during the pandemic, my wife and I have been searching for streaming series that hold our attention. We’ve been through any number of suggestions—some of which seemed rather desperate—with ...Read more
- The Itch to WriteNotes During a Pandemic One of the great pleasures of talking to my brother frequently—which I’ve been doing lately–is hearing of writers I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. Bill mentioned to me, for instance, that he had just bought two volumes of the reviews of Marjorie Perloff, a name I’d never heard. She writes regularly for the ...Read more
- The Night Everything ChangedA Single Scene from the Alexandria Quartet Even now that I’ve finished, I continue to be obsessed with the Alexandria Quartet. I would love to know how much Durrell envisioned when he began the work. He had supposedly been planning what he called his Book of the Dead (his early working title) for years, before he ...Read more
- Books of a LifetimeA House for Buddha by Ross Parmenter. Woodstock Press. 529 pp. Sacred Land, Sacred Sex, Rapture of the Deep: Concerning Deep Ecology and Celebrating Life by Dolores LaChapelle. Kivaki Press. 383 pp. The Lyndoniad by William Guy. Xlibris. 444pp. On my second trip to Mexico—I believe the year was 1991—my wife and I had arrived at the Basilica ...Read more
- Was Jung a Mystic?Jung the Mystic: The Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung’s Life and Teachings a new biography by Gary Lachman. Tarcher/Penguin258 pp. $24.95. This is my first biography of Jung, and I’m not at all sure this is the one to start with. Years ago, when my first marriage ended and I was going through a personal crisis, ...Read more
- When Ritual Goes Too FarUnorthodox, a four-part series by Maria Schrader. With Shira Haas, Amit Rahav, Jeff Wilbusch. Netflix ***** Unorthodox is an absolutely brilliant piece of work, and I can’t recommend it too highly. Four episodes of roughly 50 minutes apiece, it shows a woman from an Orthodox community in Williamsburg Brooklyn fleeing her family and taking off for ...Read more
- World of WomenPortrait of a Lady on Fire a film by Celine Sciamma. With Noemie Merlant, Adele Haenel, Luana Bajrami, Valeria Golino. ***** Portrait of a Lady on Fire is set on an estate in 18th century Brittany, and in an early scene an artist named Marianne (Noemie Merlant) travels there, rowed by a group of men; from ...Read more
- Portrait of the Artist as a Young HasidMy Name Is Asher Lev a novel by Chaim Potok. Anchor Books. 369 pp. $15.95. **** When I was looking through Goodreads trying to decide if I wanted to read another Chaim Potok novel, I came across a reviewer who said—about this book, I believe—“Chaim Potok refuses to write a page turner.” I thought that an ...Read more
- Happier Simpler Time?Little Women a film by Greta Gerwig. With Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Meryl Streep. **** I’ll start by admitting that, unlike every woman I’ve spoken to about it, I didn’t read the book. A boy reading such a book in my day—the late fifties and early sixties—would have been weird. ...Read more
- What Violence BegetsQueen and Slim a film by Melina Matsoukas. With Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith, Bokeem Woodbine. Written by Lena Waithe ***** This is a stupendous movie, another absolute must see, by a group of people I hadn’t encountered before (which may be a failing on my part). The acting, directing, and cinematography are all marvelous, but the ...Read more
- Family ReunionThe Irishman a film by Martin Scorsese. With Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Anna Paquin, Ray Romano. ***** Toward the end of The Irishman, the former union boss and mobster Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro) is looking through some photos in a nursing home while a nurse takes his blood pressure. He asks her if she knows ...Read more
- TrulyUnbelievable a limited Netflix series by Lisa Cholodenko, Michael Dinner, Susannah Grant. With Kaitlyn Dever, Toni Collette, Merritt Wever. ***** Unbelievable is a series about a serial rapist, a fact which would normally have taken it off my list. I’m interested in crime dramas, like most people, but rape is too hard to take. But Unbelievable ...Read more
- Young Man with a HornA Good Day to Die a novel by Jim Harrison. A Delta Book. 176 pp. $7.95 (in 1973) ** It’s startling to realize that, after a first novel that was the semi-autobiographical and rather random ruminations of a poet who loved the natural world, Jim Harrison, with A Good Day to Die, suddenly became a novelist. ...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
- 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
- Whose House Is It?The Last Black Man in San Francisco a film by Joe Talbot. With Jimmie Fails, Jonathan Majors, Danny Glover, Tichina Arnold. ****1/2 The Last Black Man in San Francisco was for me a study in faces, the deeply expressive faces of not only its lead actors, but also every actor in the film, from the street ...Read more
- Get Out Your HandkerchiefsPavarotti a film by Ron Howard. With Placido Domingo, Zubin Mehta, Jose Carreras, Bono. ***** Pavarotti is an unabashed example of cinematic hagiography, which tells the life story of Luciano Pavarotti through a group of loving admirers. The film mentions a couple of illicit affairs—including the notorious one that led to his divorce and second marriage—and ...Read more
- And Actually IsThe World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path by Norman Fisher. Shambhala. 207 pp. $17.95. ****1/2 It’s an odd title for a book on Buddhism, which is supposed to devote itself to the world as it is. When Fischer lectured on the book at the Chapel Hill Zen Center, someone asked him about that, ...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
- But You’ll Wish You CouldThe Dead Don’t Die a film by Jim Jarmusch. With Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloe Sevigny, Tilda Swinton, Danny Glover. * Early in The Dead Don’t Die, a UPS man makes a delivery to a gas station and convenience store (except it’s WUPS. Clever, huh?), and the geeky manager asks him for some wisdom for the ...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)