Uneasy Rider Uneasy Rider
It's not often that a new style appears in American prose, but this is what happened with John Haskell's first book, a collection of short stories called I am not Jackson Pollock...
Feb 3, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Benjamin Kunkel
Beyond Good and Evil Beyond Good and Evil
Adorno said, as we all know, that writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. This is not to say, as many imagine, that writing poetry after Auschwitz is to be forbidden, or is i...
Jan 13, 2005 / Books & the Arts / John Banville
Is That All There Is? Is That All There Is?
It's hard to resist the misery of V.S. Naipaul's late fiction, hard not to surrender to its bleak and wary authority.
Dec 9, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Michael Wood
Body Heat Body Heat
After the Kinsey Report but before the first Penthouse Forum, John Updike wrote, "He kneels in a kind of sickness between her spread legs.
Dec 2, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Mark Lotto
Of Love and Other Demons Of Love and Other Demons
The first chapter of Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote follows our hero's adventures from 1936 through 1948, a particularly heady period of his life.
Nov 24, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Nathaniel Rich
The Shock of the Old The Shock of the Old
These remarks introduced a centennial tribute to Isaac Bashevis Singer in October at the 92nd Street Y in New York.
Nov 24, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Morris Dickstein
The Good Girl The Good Girl
In the past few decades, Russell Banks has established himself as one of America's most important living writers, one of a handful with the daring and the talent to plumb our his...
Nov 24, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Deborah Scroggins
Imitation of Life Imitation of Life
To return to Chekhov in this cultural moment makes you feel as if you were experiencing spring in Russia.
Nov 24, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Lee Siegel
The Counter-Life The Counter-Life
Philip Roth is a miracle of modern medicine.
Nov 4, 2004 / Books & the Arts / James Wolcott