Category: sex

Looks Pretty Good to Me
My Old Ass a movie by Megan Park. With Maisy Stella, Aubrey Plaza, Percy Hynes White, Maria Dizzia. Streaming on Amazon Prime. ***** I tend not to like movies about time travel. I don’t like gimmicky movies in general (a contemporary teenager goes back to the fifties and is at a total loss because they don’t ...
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Writing Like God
The Known World a novel by Edward P. Jones. Harper Perennial. 388 pp. ***** I have a friend who, when he wants to compliment a writer’s style, says, He (or she) writes like a god. He’s said that a few too many times at this point, but I know what he means. He reads a number ...
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Plain Truth
All Aunt Hagar’s Children stories by Edward P. Jones. Harper Perennial. 399 pp. ***** Edward P. Jones, it would seem, can write about anything, and anybody. He published his first book of stories, Lost in the City, in 1992 (otherwise known as half-a-lifetime ago). It was a bit of a late arrival on the literary scene; ...
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Drag Queen to Bodhisattva
Street Zen: The Life & Works of Issan Dorsey by David Schneider. Shambhala. 246 pp. ***** I resisted reading this book for a long time. Back in the early nineties, when my wife was in divinity school and we began meditating, she worked one summer at an AIDS hospice in Boston and continued to work with ...
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He Debuted as a Master
Lost in the City stories by Edward P. Jones. Amisted. 243 pp. $15.99. ***** There was a time when I read book reviews the way, as a kid, I used to read the sports pages. At my house we got the Sunday New York Times and Saturday Review, also the New Yorker. It wasn’t as if ...
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The Alice Munro Conundrum
A Disturbing Truth I regard Alice Munro as an almost unparalleled short story writer. I can’t think of anyone whose stories I admire and enjoy more. A major part of what she writes about is the odd byways of the female psyche, women who think in ways they shouldn’t and go on to wayward behavior. Women ...
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The Critic as Artist
The 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 ...
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She’s Ours
Runaway stories by Alice Munro. Vintage. 335 pp. $15.95 ***** I first heard of Alice Munro in the early eighties, when I had hooked up with my agent and first editor and they were both enthusiastic fans; my agent, Virginia Barber, was also Munro’s, and my editor, Sherry Huber, was an avid reader who constantly recommended ...
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Master of the Form
Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories by Loren Groff. Hachette Books. 306 pp. ***** Before reading Lauren Groff’s first book of short stories, I saw her as a novelist who had apprenticed on the shorter form. Her first novel was big in various ways, did well both commercially and critically. She followed with two massive, ambitious ...
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Yes You Can Go Home Again
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff. Penguin Books. 460 pp. **** The Monsters of Templeton is Lauren Groff’s tribute to her hometown, Cooperstown, New York. Apparently it was founded by the father of James Fenimore Cooper, it’s most famous citizen (but not, at this point, its finest novelist; Groff has far surpassed him), and includes ...
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You Need to be Writing
Crowded 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, ...
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The Nothing of God
She was scorned, kicked around, physically abused, sexually abused, told that she doesn’t count, that she barely even exists. Somehow it is these very things that give her the resources to undertake this adventure.
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We Are Stardust We Are Golden
This novel isn’t just about the commune. It’s about the whole Sixties dream, and what it did to someone who was raised in it.
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Embodied Mystic
This author deeply understands mystical spirituality, true religion, in a way that few people do.
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What Is Sex?
Lauren Groff seems to be gently suggesting that sex is a human energy that doesn’t necessarily interfere with a religious life. They can co-exist. They should co-exist.
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Portrait of Genius
This is the most compulsively readable book I’ve encountered in many a moon. I couldn’t wait to pick it up every night.
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Two Gay Men
Good Grief a film by Dan Levy. With Dan Levy, Ruth Nessa, Himesh Patel, Luke Evans. Streaming on Netflix ** Rustin a film by George C. Wolfe. With Colman Domingo, Ami Ameen, Glynn Turman, Chris Rock. Streaming on Netflix ***1/2 Good Grief tells the story of a man whose husband dies. Marc (Dan Levy) is living an ...
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Make That March December. Maybe February.
May December a film by Todd Haynes. With Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton. Streaming on various platforms. ** With all due respect to the various people who have suggested that this movie be nominated for Best Picture (including both reviewers at the New York Times), and fully understanding that Todd Haynes is into weird character ...
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And of a Marriage
Anatomy of a Fall a film by Justine Triet. With Sandra Huller, Milo Machado Graner, Samuel Theis. Streaming on Amazon Prime. ***** A friend whose opinion I respect recently said he hated this movie—and all courtroom dramas—because many things take place that never happen in a courtroom. I can’t argue with that, not having been in ...
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Who Can You Trust?
Out on the Rim a novel by Ross Thomas. Thomas Dunne Books. St. Martin’s Minotaur. 340 pp. ***1/2 I used to think I’d like to be a writer like Ross Thomas. He was an accomplished stylist, had an insider’s knowledge of the world of international intrigue and crime (I’m not sure where he got that), a ...
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