Category: the-art-of-narrative
- 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
- 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
- Too Much ThinkingCall It Grace: Finding Meaning in a Fractured World by Serene Jones. Viking. 310 pp. ***1/2 Four Men Shaking: Searching for Sanity with Samuel Beckett, Norman Mailer, and My Perfect Zen Teacher by Lawrence Shainberg. Shambhala. 134 pp. $16.95. ****1/2 “To stop your mind does not mean to stop the activities of mind. It means your mind ...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
- 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
- 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
- Take Me Out to the BallgameNot that I Want to Watch the Damn Thing I’m as sorry as I can be—and no one is sorrier than the man who hit the ball—that a little girl was struck by a foul ball at a game in Houston and had to be taken to the hospital. I agree that protective netting should be ...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
- 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
- At the End of Her RopeDestroyer a film by Karyn Kusama. With Nicole Kidman, Toby Kebbel, Tatiana Maslany, Sebastian Stan. ***** This was the best movie of 2018. I realize that’s an offbeat opinion, but I’ve seen six of the eight Oscar nominees and none was as riveting as Destroyer. As for performances, Nicole Kidman’s is the best by a man or ...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
- 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
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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)