Category: sex
- You Got It All WrongBalthazar book two of the Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. Faber. 884 pp. $16.95. This is a brilliant idea for a series of novels. Kudos to Lawrence Durrell for even thinking of it. But then for the man who conceived it to have a superb poetic style, an interest in religion and psychology and just about ...Read more
- Making Up for Lost TimeJustine book one of the Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. Faber. 884 pp. $16.99 I’ve always been a book snob and have never read things when everyone else did. I didn’t read The Way of Zen—which changed my life—until my late thirties, though everyone else I knew read it in college. I read my wife’s copy, ...Read more
- InconceivablePrivate Life a film by Tamara Jenkins. With Kathryn Hahn, Paul Giamatti, Molly Shannon, Kayli Carter. Streaming on Netflix. ***** I never had a problem getting a woman pregnant. My problem was not getting a woman pregnant. So I’ve never known much about couples failing to conceive. It’s a whole field of medicine these days, and ...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
- You Think You Got ProblemsThe Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars by Meghan Daum. Gallery Books. 224 pp. $27.00. **** I’ve been thinking a lot about my college days lately, perhaps because I’m coming up on my 50th reunion. If I could name one overwhelming sentiment that characterized my generation’s arrival at college, it was: don’t ...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
- 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
- Words For What Is Beyond WordsSecret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions by Jeffrey J. Kripal. University of Chicago Press. 478 pp. Jeffrey J. Kripal is a religious writer like no other I’ve ever read. He grew up as a Catholic in Nebraska, for instance (there are Catholics in Nebraska?) He was devout, actually entered a seminary ...Read more
- Old Lady KoansThe Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women. Edited by Florence Caplow and Susan Moon. Wisdom Publications. 455 pp. $18.95 Among my favorite Zen teachings are the Old Lady stories, where some pompous Zen master thinks a great deal of himself and has his bubble burst by a woman who has no apparent status ...Read more
- Present at the CreationWolf: A False Memoir by Jim Harrison. Delta. 225 pp. Having just made my way chronologically through the novels of Toni Morrison—an experience I’m still digesting—it occurred to me that I might do the same with Jim Harrison. I once wrote, “I sometimes think I could sit down and read through his entire oeuvre, all thirty ...Read more
- Women Without MenA Mercy a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 196 pp. $15.95 I have felt adrift in Toni Morrison novels before—at some point in every book I’ve read—but never right at the beginning as in A Mercy. It begins with a short section in first person, and I had no idea what was going on, almost stopped ...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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Colette Before ColetteColette a film by Wash Westmoreland. With Keira Knightley, Dominic West, Fiona Shaw, Denise Gough. ***1/2 Colette was a great hero of mine when I was young, because she wrote both fiction and nonfiction, she always seemed to write about herself, she wrote about transgressive subjects, and she seemed to discover herself through writing. She made ...Read more
- Saul Learning to BellowThe Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. Penguin Classics. 586 pp. $17.00 ****1/2 When I was a teenager in Pittsburgh in the Sixties, I made up my mind that I wanted to be a writer (without telling anybody, in case I failed), and set about trying to educate myself. The writers we studied at school ...Read more
Recent Evening Mind Posts
You Need to be WritingThe Other SideThe River is Freedom, the Raft ParadiseThe Nothing of GodWe Are Stardust We Are Golden
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (114)American literature (197)art (109)Buddhism (163)Christianity (119)creative process (232)death and dying (128)meditation (118)movies (152)music (36)race (95)religion (180)sex (157)spirituality (167)the art of narrative (238)Uncategorized (19)world literature (23)
Print
You Need to be WritingThe Other SideThe River is Freedom, the Raft ParadiseThe Nothing of GodWe Are Stardust We Are Golden
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (114)American literature (197)art (109)Buddhism (163)Christianity (119)creative process (232)death and dying (128)meditation (118)movies (152)music (36)race (95)religion (180)sex (157)spirituality (167)the art of narrative (238)Uncategorized (19)world literature (23)