It’s more than the weather, the August doldrums: A dark mood seems to have descended on the city. You can actually see a sort of robotic anomie on the faces of people on the streets and in the subways, where New Yorkers have learned to take the psychic temperature of their neighbors. A guy in Read More
It’s more than the weather, the August doldrums: A dark mood seems to have descended on the city. You can actually see a sort of robotic anomie on the faces of people on the streets and in the subways, where New Yorkers have learned to take the psychic temperature of their neighbors. A guy in Read More
About a year ago, in a diner on eastern Long Island, I experienced one of those moments—to which writers seem especially prone—of rapt, unseemly over-interest in the people at the next table. Beautifully dressed for leisure, sleek and thin as whippets, the young, medicated-seeming mother and her slightly older husband were the sort of parents Read More
About a year ago, in a diner on eastern Long Island, I experienced one of those moments—to which writers seem especially prone—of rapt, unseemly over-interest in the people at the next table. Beautifully dressed for leisure, sleek and thin as whippets, the young, medicated-seeming mother and her slightly older husband were the sort of parents Read More
It’s more than the weather, the August doldrums: A dark mood seems to have descended on the city. You can actually see a sort of robotic anomie on the faces of people on the streets and in the subways, where New Yorkers have learned to take the psychic temperature of their neighbors. A guy in Read More
It’s more than the weather, the August doldrums: A dark mood seems to have descended on the city. You can actually see a sort of robotic anomie on the faces of people on the streets and in the subways, where New Yorkers have learned to take the psychic temperature of their neighbors. A guy in Read More
Look at Me , by Jennifer Egan. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 415 pages, $24.95
Given the sorry state of so much current fiction, the appearance of a novel with a narrative style that seems fresh, accurate, clear and inventive-especially when combined with a gift for observation and the delineation of character-is truly an occasion for calling up Read MoreThe Virgin of Bennington , by Kathleen Norris. Riverhead Books, 256 pages, $24.95.
Plenty of bizarre conversations took place in the back room of Max's Kansas City, but probably few more unlikely–or more touching–than the scene Kathleen Norris describes in her new memoir, The Virgin of Bennington . A hundred or so pages into this understated, Read MoreRadical Sanity: Commonsense Advice for Uncommon Women , by Elizabeth Wurtzel. AtRandom.com, 85 pages, $15.
All of us have times when we feel the need of sage advice, of that steadying hand gently guiding us toward the light at the end of the tunnel. My own dark several years of the soul spanned my early 20's, Read MoreThe House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed , by Sara Gay Forden. William Morrow, 351 pages, $26.
The Gucci family, as everyone knows, accomplished something far more magical than turning the proverbial sow's ear into the proverbial silk purse. They transformed the sow's ear–or presumably some more tender part of Read MoreAmerican Rhapsody , by Joe Eszterhas. Alfred A. Knopf, 432 pages, $25.95.
It's a familiar scenario: You're trying to watch a film, but all you keep hearing in your head is the pitch that got the movie made. Well, it's sort of like Titanic crossed with Thelma and Louise , these two chicks hijack an ocean Read MoreThe Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America , by Jeffrey Rosen. Random House, 274 pages, $24.95.
Not long ago I asked a friend if he happened to have the address of a writer we both know. My friend didn't, but said he could probably locate our mutual acquaintance with some help from the Internet. Read MoreThe Hillary Trap: Looking for Power in All the Wrong Places , by Laura Ingraham. Hyperion, 228 pages, $23.95.
If it turns out you and someone whose ideas you dislike dislike the same person, does that mean the two of you have something in common? Is your enemy's enemy really your friend? Enough metaphysics! Let's get Read MoreA General Theory of Love , by Thomas Lewis, M.D., Fari Amini, M.D., and Richard Lannon, M.D. Random House, 274 pages, $22.95.
The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex , by David M. Buss, Ph.D. The Free Press, 258 pages, $25. How ignorant and misguided we were, the girls of Read MoreAndy Kaufman Revealed!: Best Friend Tells All , by Bob Zmuda with Matthew Scott Hansen. Little, Brown & Company, 306 pages, $24.
What tender regard we've learned to show for the sensitivities of the dead, whom we treat so much more thoughtfully than we do the living. How solicitously we debate the deceased's preferences concerning public Read More
