Category: race
- 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
- What Love?Love a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 202 pp. $15.00 I was sitting down to write about her eighth novel—I’ve been reading her work chronologically, ever since I saw Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am—when I heard the news that Toni Morrison had died, at the age of 88. At first I thought I should write ...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
- Fools’Paradise a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 318 pp. $16.00 I can agree that Beloved is Toni Morrison’s masterpiece, but in some ways I found Paradise a more inventive and intricate novel. It’s the story of a fictional town in Oklahoma that was settled in the mid-twentieth century by African Americans who had been turned away ...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
- 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
- Lives of Men and WomenTar Baby a novel by Toni Morrison. Plume. 306 pp. $10.95 The set-up of Tar Baby is brilliant, one of the most brilliant thing about it. Valerian and Margaret Street live six months every year in a beautiful house on an island in the Caribbean. She is his second wife, a trophy wife, we suspect, 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
- 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
- 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
- They Got ChemistryGreen Book a film by Peter Farrelly. With Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini. ****1/2 I understand why critics like A.O. Scott might be reluctant to praise Green Book. It’s filled with so many racial and ethnic stereotypes that it’s almost embarrassing. The audience is often dying to laugh but not sure they should. When you’ve ...Read more
- Yes ButWidows a film by Steve McQueen. With Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Carrie Coon, Liam Neeson. ****1/2 Widows is a movie that is deeply satisfying emotionally and aesthetically without—as far as I’m concerned—making a hell of a lot of sense. Veronica (Viola Davis) is the wife of a career criminal named Harry Rawlings (Liam Neeson), ...Read more
- There Was a WarGrant by Ron Chernow. Penguin Press. 1074 pp. $40.00. ***** A friend of mine once told a story about General Patton, that after he died he asked St. Peter to take him back in history and show him the greatest general who ever lived. St. Peter agreed, and they traveled back in time to a small ...Read more
- You’ve Just Paid the Artist a Wonderful ComplimentNow Go to Hell I wrote recently about Samuel R. Delany’s Dark Reflections, a novel in which Delany seems completely present, but has given himself another life. Instead of being a science fiction writer, Arnold Hawley is a poet. Instead of living in New York and teaching at Temple, he lives in New York and teaches ...Read more
- Full and StarvingHunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay. Harper Perennial. 306 pp. $16.99. **** I’ll never look at a fat person the same way again. I use the word fat because that’s the word Roxane Gay uses; in fact she insists on it. She doesn’t like the euphemisms for her situation. She tells it like it ...Read more
- Portrait of the Artist as a Befuddled Old ManDark Reflections by Samuel R. Delany. Carroll & Graf. 295 pp. $15.95. ***** There’s nobody quite like Samuel R. Delany, and every now and then I have to read one of his books, often one I’ve read before (this is either my third or fourth time with Dark Reflections). He had an early career as a ...Read more
- But Who’s Counting?A Brief History of Seven Killings a novel by Marlon James. Riverhead Books. 688 pp. $17.00. **** I don’t know quite what to say about this novel, which I seem to have lived with for half my life (probably six weeks or so). It’s a massive novel about gangs in Jamaica, also the CIA in Jamaica, ...Read more
- Who Rolled this Joint?BlackkKlansman a film by Spike Lee. With John David Washington, Adam Driver, Topher Grace. *** I seem to be a minority of one, but I found this movie a major disappointment, perhaps because of my high expectations. I’m a Spike Lee fan from way back—Do the Right Thing is an old favorite—and I was looking forward ...Read more
- Arf ArfIsle of Dogs a film by Wes Anderson. With (among many others) Bryan Cranston, Koyu Rankin, Edward Norton, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand. ***** My friend Sally (whom I seem to be mentioning all the time here) recently wrote me the following sentence in an e-mail: “I was trying to think of books, current and always current, ...Read more
- Movies Movies MoviesFull Frame Documentary Film Festival 2018 My Lineup: The Issue of Mr. O’Dell/ Lovers of the Night; The Farm: Angola, USA;RBG; Owned: A Tale of Two Americas; 306 Hollywood; Three Identical Strangers; Las Nubes/Thy Kingdom Come; The Unafraid; Crime & Punishment. There comes a time when even the great ones have to hang up their spikes, or—before ...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)