Books
393 results
Page 37
Andrei Codrescu's "Bibliodeath'
Requiem for the printed word
Andrei Codrescu grew up in Communist Romania, where printed words were deemed more dangerous than bombs. Now he lives in a virtual world inundated with too many instantly disposable virtual words. Ah, but he has a solution.
Articles
5 minute read
Jim Quinn's "Waiting For the Wars to End'
What did you do in the war (and don't ask which one)?
The former food and language critic Jim Quinn now writes unflinching yet tender characterizations of people slogging through life. Both of these stories are sadly funny and horrifically real.
Articles
3 minute read
Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon' revisited
Into the wild, then and now: Setting boundaries, and pushing them
In Mason & Dixon, Thomas Pynchon emulates his protagonists by pushing new boundaries and venturing into unknown realms, both loony and profound, in the process risking not his life but his reputation and his worshipful constituency. It's a great novel; and I say this without having understood any more than, oh, 10 percent of it.
A trio of new poetry translations
Nabokov meets his match
The great novelist Vladimir Nabokov was a poet too, as his latest collection reminds us. Two other late European poets, also blessed with recent translations, may be worth even more of your attention.
Articles
3 minute read
Verlaine and Trakl, complete at last
Second life for two Symbolists
Here is a pair of worthy possibilities for the poetry-lover in your life: A complete work by Verlaine and a first-time ever translation of Trakl's early poems and dramatic works into English.
Articles
2 minute read
Two French Symbolists in new translation
What's old is new again
Hats off to translator Brian Stableford and Black Coat Press for presenting American readers with a world of new 19th-Century French fiction not seen here since the 1920s.
Articles
3 minute read
Helga Weiss's Holocaust diary
A new generation confronts the Holocaust
As Holocaust survivors and perpetrators die off, will that most horrifying human experience fade from memory? As a child of Holocaust victims, I can attest that the opposite is true: What the traumatized survivors wish to forget, their children are even more determined to confront.
Articles
4 minute read
"This Wild Joy': Bill Van Buskirk's poetry
Adam without Eden
Bill Van Buskirk's verse collection is a powerfully engaging book by a poet whose work depicts the hard pains and joys of living, and who deserves wider recognition.
This Wild Joy That Thrills Outside the Law. Poems by Bill Van Buskirk. Infinity Publishing, 2010. 100 pages; $9.95. www.amazon.com.
Articles
5 minute read
China's Nobel laureate, reconsidered
The unbearable unreadability of a Nobel Prize-winning novel
The awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Mo Yan has unleashed patriotic celebrations in China. Which leaves just one question: Has anyone actually read his novel?
Articles
4 minute read
D'Annunzio's "Notturno,' rediscovered
The Italian patient
Yale University Press and Margellos World Republic of Letters Books have rescued yet another forgotten reputation. Gabriele D'Annunzio's Notturno, painstakingly written as he recovered from war wounds, is neither novel nor non-fiction memoir; instead, it's a prose poem.
Articles
3 minute read