Books

393 results
Page 37
It all started with a stolen notebook.

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.
AJ Sabatini

AJ Sabatini

Articles 5 minute read
From the cover: Love is all about eating words, isn't it?

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.
Merilyn Jackson

Merilyn Jackson

Articles 3 minute read
The real Mason and Dixon at work, circa 1765: 'Where haven't we gone before?'

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.
Bob Levin

Bob Levin

Articles 7 minute read
Tales to fit a set of drawings.

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.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 3 minute read
From bookish young poet to Hell on Earth.

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.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 2 minute read
De Régnier: Ornate and poetic myth-making.

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.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 3 minute read
Helga survived; now her  daughter works with children of Holocaust perpetrators.

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.
Martin Beck Matustik

Martin Beck Matustik

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.
Robert Zaller

Robert Zaller

Articles 5 minute read
Mo Yan's plot is simple, even simple-minded.

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?
Patrick D. Hazard

Patrick D. Hazard

Articles 4 minute read
D'Annunzio was almost a literary creation himself.

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.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 3 minute read