Category: creative-process
- 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
- Frankie and Johnny Were SweetheartsJazz a novel by Toni Morrison. Plume/Penguin. 229 pp. $11.95 As I move chronologically through Toni Morrison’s fiction and arrive at her sixth novel, I’ve come to various conclusions: I think of her as a Southern writer. Actually, she grew up on Lorain, Ohio, and never lived in the South. (Lorain, as she describes it in the ...Read more
- Twelve Years Away, ActuallySomewhere Toward the End a memoir by Diana Athill. Norton. 182 pp. $13.95 The good news about Somewhere Towards the End is that, at the age of 89, Diana Athill still had all her marbles and wrote as well as ever, perhaps better. Her prose seemed to gain in confidence through the years. The bad news ...Read more
- Beyond GreatBeloved a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 324 pp. $16.00. ***** I’ve been asking myself lately what literary greatness is, and how it comes about. Does the artist actually see and understand more than the rest of us, or does she just put it into words better? Back in the old days we talked about writers ...Read more
- There’s a Part II?The Souvenir a film by Joanna Hogg. With Honor Swinton Byrne, Tom Burke, Tilda Swinton. ** I realize there’s no accounting for taste, but I like to have some idea in a movie why a woman is attracted to a man, and in the case of The Souvenir I don’t have a clue. He’s somewhat older, ...Read more
- The Golden Age of EditorsStet: An Editor’s Life by Diana Athill. Grove Press. 250 pp. $16.00. **** Stet is a memoir from what I think of as the golden age of publishing. Diana Athill survived—and kept working—until publishing changed, and everything was about finding bestsellers and causing a stir. But she began when it was a gentleman’s business (though ladies ...Read more
- Fun Fun FunBooksmart a film by Olivia Wilde. With Kaitlyn Dever, Beanie Feldstein, Jessica Williams, Victoria Ruesga. ****1/2 My first reaction was to be stunned at the sheer talent this movie displays. The hilarious screenplay was written by four women. How does that work? Olivia Wilde’s direction—in her first crack at a full-length movie—is inventive and fast-paced 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
- The Tragic Hero of Our Time Is a Wizened Old Man (Played by a Woman)King Lear by William Shakespeare. Directed by Sam Gold. With Glenda Jackson, Jayne Houdyshell, Elizabeth Marvel, Ruth Wilson It’s fascinating the way works of art change through the course of one’s life. When I first read Don Quixote—as a junior in college—it seemed a comic work about a befuddled old man who had fallen in love ...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
- Ways to TruthGurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy by Roger Lipsey. Shambhala. 342 pp. $24.95. **** I read this book as a tribute to my friend Levi, who used to talk about Gurdjieff and various of his disciples almost every time we got together. He was introduced to the man by a woman who was breaking ...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
- Better Than I ExpectedThe Upside. A film by Neil Burger. With Kevin Hart, Bryan Cranston, Nicole Kidman, Julianna Margulies. **** I went to this movie because I hadn’t been to the movies for a while, I was looking for something not too heavy, and I had seen the trailer any number of times, of Kevin Hart looking after a ...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
- A Rage to ConnectAt Eternity’s Gate a film by Julian Schnabel. With Willem Dafoe, Rubert Friend, Oscar Isaac, Emmanuelle Seigner. ****1/2 I don’t know how many movies there have been about Vincent Van Gogh, though I myself have seen three or four. I have not seen the 1956 portrayal by Kirk Douglas, and don’t believe I will. Ever since I was a kid ...Read more
- Coming HomeAn Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn. Vintage. 306 pp. $16.00 **** I’m a sucker for father-son stories, and this one is unique; several years ago, Daniel Mendelsohn’s 81-year-old father asked if he could attend the freshman seminar on The Odyssey that Mendelsohn was teaching at Bard College. The elder Mendelsohn ...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
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Yes You Can Go Home AgainHow to Live Your LifeYou Need to be WritingThe Other SideThe River is Freedom, the Raft Paradise
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)