Category: race
- The Ones Left BehindThe Holdovers a film by Alexander Payne. With Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph. In theaters and streaming for an arm and leg on Amazon Prime. ***** Three more or less sane adults (though one is just eighteen), all of whom have strong points, weak points, deeply held secrets, but none of whom is the ...Read more
- ChampKing of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero by David Remnick. Vintage. 352 pp. $14.39. ***** Of all the subjects I would have thought I knew everything about, Muhammad Ali is right at the top of the list. I started following his career in 1960, when he won an Olympic Gold ...Read more
- The Spirit Behind the StoryThe Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to his White Mother by James McBride. Riverhead Books. 295 pp. ***** I was so overwhelmed by The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store that I decided to reread James McBride’s memoir of life with his mother, The Color of Water. I knew his own situation influenced the novel, ...Read more
- Utopian RealistThe Heaven & Earth Grocery Store a novel by James McBride. Riverhead Books. 385 pp. ***** James McBride has written award-winning and bestselling novels in the past—The Good Lord Bird and Deacon King Kong—also a highly acclaimed memoir, The Color of Water, but The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store—is a different kind of book altogether, beyond ...Read more
- But We DoDidn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta a novel by James Hannaham. Back Bay Books. 308 pp. $17.99 ***** There was an aesthetic dilemma about Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta which, as I read the book, seemed insurmountable. Carlotta herself—who is not quite the narrator (it’s in third person) but ...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
- FreshAir a film by Ben Affleck. With Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, Chris Messina, Viola Davis, Matthew Maher. Streaming on Amazon. ***** I have often said, in reviewing some grim work of art, “It’s not the feel-good movie of the year.” I meant that as a compliment. We don’t want to feel good. We want to see ...Read more
- Art Imitating LifeChampion an opera by Terence Blanchard. Libretto by Michael Cristofer. With Eric Owens, Ryan Speedo Green, Ethan Joseph, Latonia Moore. ***** I have never reviewed an opera and certainly don’t have the qualifications. I’ve only been attending for a few years, and know little about the art form. I sometimes think television reviewers watch so much ...Read more
- Movin’ on UpThe Intuitionist a novel by Colson Whitehead. Anchor Books. 255 pp. $16.00. ***1/2 It’s tough being a moron. When I finished Harlem Shuffle, the third Colson Whitehead novel I’d read, I was so excited about his work that I wanted more, so I decided to go back to his first novel, which won a number of ...Read more
- It’s All Freddie’s FaultHarlem Shuffle a novel by Colson Whitehead. Anchor Books. 318 pp. $17.00. ***** Colson Whitehead, it seems, can do anything as a writer. The Underground Railroad—which first brought the writer to my attention—was a wild fantasy about life under slavery and about the African American experience. It won the National Book Award and was made into ...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
- Ancient and TwistedUntangling Karma: Intimate Zen Stories on Healing Trauma by Judith Ragir. Monkfish. 251 pp. $18.99 Untangling Karma is not quite a dharma book and not quite a memoir, but has elements of both. Judith Ragir is a longtime Zen practitioner—some forty years—who has looked back at her life of practice and seen what it has done ...Read more
- All VoiceTrain Whistle Guitar from Albert Murray: Collected Novels & Poems Library of America pp. 1-141. The Spyglass Tree from Albert Murray: Collected Novels & Poems Library of America pp. 141-309. Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie as told to Albert Murray. Random House. 399 pp. I haven’t posted in some time for a variety of reasons: ...Read more
- Devastating But ImportantThe Nickel Boys a novel by Colson Whitehead. Doubleday. 213 pp. $24.95 ***** I got this book as a gift many months ago, and it has sat on my shelf ever since. The problem wasn’t anything about Colson Whitehead; I loved The Underground Railroad and actually heard him read from it in Durham. He’s a person ...Read more
- He Got a D in English at Ole MissThe Life of William Faulkner, Volume One: The Past Is Never Dead 1897-1934. By Carl Rollyson. University of Virginia Press. 476 pp. $34.95 ***1/2 This is the third biography of William Faulkner I’ve read, and I should mention right off the bat—something I don’t remember ever saying before—that I didn’t read every word. I read Joseph ...Read more
- Voices of New YorkLush Life a novel by Richard Price. Picador. 455 pp. $15.00 **** Two guys from the projects in New York, Little Dap and Tristan, have a scheme to make money. They’ll go out late and mug some bar hoppers in the East Village to get cash, go uptown and buy cocaine in quantity, come back, divide ...Read more
- Me EitherI Am Not Sidney Poitier: A Novel By Percival Everett. Graywolf Press. 234 pp. $16.00 **** There is a kind of writer who plans out his books in great detail. No less a literary eminence than P.G. Wodehouse, for instance, spent weeks planning and taking notes and writing outlines in order to write one of his ...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
- You Can Too Go Home Again(The Faulkner Project) William Faulkner Novels 1926-1962 Library of America. Five volumes. 5454 pp. $157.00 ***** I began this project on a whim last June with a nagging question: why did my father, dying of leukemia at the age of 47, read almost nothing but Faulkner in his final years? I had the second volume of ...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)