Chalk up yet another writerly reaction to the trauma of 9/11. Four years on, we’re almost able to chart on a graph how some writers regurgitated bits of the smoke they ingested as super-realistic horror, while others about-faced into fantasy. What Jane Smiley did, as “an antidote to history,” was to take to her bedroom Read More
Chalk up yet another writerly reaction to the trauma of 9/11. Four years on, we’re almost able to chart on a graph how some writers regurgitated bits of the smoke they ingested as super-realistic horror, while others about-faced into fantasy. What Jane Smiley did, as “an antidote to history,” was to take to her bedroom Read More
“Can it be true that all of Will's patients are consumed by the topic of sex? Getting it. Not getting it. Getting it, but not enough of it. Getting it but not It. Coming, not coming, coming too soon, coming too late. Coming, but only Read More
Envy, by Kathryn Harrison. Random House, 301 pages, $24.95. "Can it be true that all of Will's patients are consumed by the topic of sex? Getting it. Not getting it. Getting it, but not enough of it. Getting it but not It. Coming, not coming, coming too soon, coming too late. Coming, but only under Read More
The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss. W.W. Norton, 252 pages, $23.95.
There was a little girl, Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid. I present this Longfellow verselet by way of asserting that Read MorePrep , by Curtis Sittenfeld. Random House, 406 pages, $21.95.
Yo, prep-school papa! You with the gray hair and rueful smile, dropping your little bundle of neuroses off at her boarding school after the long Christmas break. You think no one was watching? You think no one saw how you jumped on the cell Read MoreBad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2, by Annie Proulx. Scribner, 219 pages, $25.
The secret to Annie Proulx's latest collection of down-home Wyoming stories is hidden in plain sight: "In Elk Tooth everyone tries to be a character and with some success. There is little more to it than being broke, proud, ingenious and setting your Read MoreJudy Blume snarled! Whatever will we tell our kids? At a cocktail reception an hour before she was to become the first children's-book author ever awarded the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters on Nov. 17, the cherished queen bee of kid lit bared her teeth at what we frankly thought Read More
Runaway, by Alice Munro. Alfred A. Knopf, 335 pages, $25.
Does anyone know if the word "coquette" was in vogue in Canada in the 1940's? Because if it was, you can be sure that the gravely gifted and always interesting short-story writer Alice Munro, born in rural Ontario in 1931, didn't get through high Read MoreThe Seas , by Samantha Hunt. MacAdam/Cage, 196 pages, $23.
A new aphorism for the over-30 set: Don't trust anyone who claims to be objective about experimental fiction. Subjectivity is part and parcel of the experience, and quite gloriously so, it seems to me. I cheerfully admit that a lot of what passes for Read MoreHeir to the Glimmering World , by Cynthia Ozick. Houghton Mifflin, 310 pages, $24.
Confession: It's not Virginia Woolf I'm afraid of-it's Cynthia Ozick. Even though she blurbed my last book (disclosure, disclosure) and once recommended me for a fellowship I didn't get (thanks for the memories, Mr. Guggenheim), still I'm afraid of her. She Read MoreVermeer
in Bosnia: Cultural Comedies and Political Tragedies , by Lawrence Weschler. Pantheon Books, 432 pages, $25.95. After a fair amount of discussion with folk on neighboring treadmills, the word I've finally settled upon is "excellentric." It adds a dash of excellence to the high art of being eclectic, while connoting the expertise that sometimes goes Read MoreA Man After His Own Heart , by Charles Siebert. Crown, 288 pages, $23.95.
There's a rare breed of writer who, through heightened powers of observation and uncanny vocabulary, elevates the dross of current events into song. Not actual song-the sentences scan the same as anyone else's on the pages of The New York Times Read More
