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CLASSIFIEDS
Arts
Books
Nun-sense:
The dazzling art of Boston’s Sister Corita
The question that arises when you consider the dazzling screenprints of the late Boston artist Sister Corita Kent is: how could an artist so good be so ignored?
By:
GREG COOK
No Reservations:
Author John Burnham Schwartz on adapting his novel, Reservation Road
Rage itself becomes a monster.
By:
JENNY HALPER
King to C5:
Kasparov comes to Harvard
Greengard, no less eager to make a good local impression, had called Kasparov “the Bill Belichick of chess.”
By:
JEFFREY GANTZ
American dreamer:
Ha Jin retraces his journey
It’s difficult to think of an American writer with a story more inspiring than Ha Jin’s.
By:
JOHN FREEMAN
Brit wits:
As Nick Hornby and Irvine Welsh face 50, two of Brit Lit’s standard-bearers stare down middle age in very different ways
Nick Hornby’s new novel is about a boy.
Not
About a Boy
. Irvine Welsh’s new short story collection is filthy. Not
Filth
.
By:
MIKE MILIARD
Thirsty nights:
Rebecca Barry’s bar stories
A man walks into a bar.
By:
CLEA SIMON
Difficult people:
Tom Perrotta keeps his characters company through the bumps and bumbles of American life
As a reader of fiction, at this point in life I’m sort of in my late Imperial phase — a sensationalist, easily distracted, with a vulgar appetite for brilliance.
By:
JAMES PARKER
Blessed be He:
One Jew’s struggle with God
Shalom Auslander’s memoir,
Foreskin’s Lament
, begins with a hoot of a first chapter, one that’s sure to be quoted on nationwide Jewish e-mail chains.
By:
IAN SANDS
Class acts:
Richard Russo’s family tidings
The cast of
Bridge of Sighs
— Russo’s first novel since his 2001 Pulitzer winner,
Empire Falls
— may have benefitted from a refresher course with Emerson.
By:
JOHN FREEMAN
''Great Journeys'':
From Marco Polo to Twain and Shackleton, with a bit of Pico Iyer
Now that the jungle is withdrawing, and the wilderness is tenanted, the brief of the travel writer has altered somewhat.
By:
JAMES PARKER
Environmentally yours:
Two new takes on global warming
Environmental interest groups, Shellenberger and Nordhaus claimed, simply don’t dream big enough to address the multifaceted monster that is global warming.
By:
DEIRDRE FULTON
''Things'' we love:
Writers extol sacred objects of everyday use — and uselessness
Until I was 14, I spent nearly every Saturday evening wading through a wealth of antique objects in my grandmother’s small apartment in the Baltimore suburbs.
By:
CAITLIN E. CURRAN
Touched by grace:
Andre Dubus’s unending gifts
This, around November, when New England’s bones start to show — and I realized my heart was beating faster. The story had quickened my pulse.
By:
NINA MACLAUGHLIN
Fallout joys:
When the Nirvana explosion rocked Boston
In his newly published
The Sound of Our Town: A History of Boston Rock & Roll
,
Phoenix
contributor Brett Milano explores the evolution of the local music scene.
By:
BRETT MILANO
Common ground:
Ann Patchett’s Boston allegory
Like the American naturalists of the last century, Ann Patchett examines race and class in her new novel,
Run
.
By:
DANA KLETTER
Everybody say, ‘Arragh’:
Two excellent books about pirates
Each of these books bears a tongue-in-cheekily arcane subtitle.
By:
CLIF GARBODEN
Our town?:
Garrison Keillor on his new novel of Lake Wobegon
“Evelyn was an insomniac so when they say she died in her sleep, you have to question that.”
By:
JEFFREY GANTZ
War, peace, and Robert Pinsky:
The season's fiction, non-fiction, and poetry
Every few years, a fall publishing season emerges that should remind us that Boston could be the literary epicenter of America.
By:
JOHN FREEMAN
Talking to Himself:
Alan Alda talks to us about his new memoir and what it means to live a successful life
There’s a scene in Alan Alda’s new memoir that’s hard to forget: Hawkeye, age eleven, shooting terminally ill rabbits to a bloody, dusty death.
By:
JENNY HALPER
Laotian dreams:
Colin Cotterill’s Dr. Siri novels
Dr. Siri Paiboun has a sense of proportion.
By:
CLEA SIMON
The kids are not all right:
The authors of Restless Virgins talk about the underbelly of teen culture at Milton Academy
If you lived in Massachusetts you heard about it.
By:
JENNY HALPER
In search of Kerouac:
‘Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?’ . . . Lowell?!
Ashare drops me off, frantic Matt Ashare from my paper, swilling coffee in a ceramic mug at the wheel of his sulky-blue Saturn Ion and ranting about dogfighting.
By:
JAMES PARKER
Aesthetic genius:
Why can’t more writers be smart enough to be beautiful, handsome, or at least cute
When I saw Marisha Pessl in the
New York Times
Style Section, meticulously posed on an antique chair wearing a pair of high heels and a coy smile, I cringed.
By:
SHARON STEEL
Cover story:
The amazing art of ‘Mingering Mike’
To any true vinyl obsessive, a rare musical artifact — and the story behind it — is often as compelling as the sound in its grooves.
By:
JONATHAN PERRY
Bouncers tell all:
Tales from behind the velvet rope
A young man of my acquaintance, a callow pube of a London club-goer, got himself bounced not long ago from an establishment on the King’s Road.
By:
JAMES PARKER
Wall of shame:
A definitive life of Phil Spector
In a moment of weakness, he licensed the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” for an ad for the erectile-dysfunction drug Cialis.
By:
BRETT MILANO
Animal husbandry:
Ted Hughes and Les Murray
Les Murray and Ted Hughes, though they dwelled in each other’s antipodes, had plenty in common.
By:
JAMES PARKER
Dead white females:
From Fall Out Boy to One Night in Paris, modern pop culture is what it is today thanks to 10 long-expired ladies
Can you remember the last time you curled up under the covers with Marcel Proust’s I
n Search of Lost Time
?
By:
SHARON STEEL
Star power:
Deneuve demystifies — and enchants
Deneuve has been in the public eye long enough to know that only damn fools reveal themselves to the public.
By:
CHARLES TAYLOR
Dog lives:
Jon Katz, Mark Doty, and their best friends
Dog Days
,
Dog Years
, dog decades, dog centuries . . . where will this madness end?
By:
AMY FINCH
The Golden Age of Comics:
Comic critic Douglas Wolk on Reading Comics
Ever wondered what would happen if the famed
Simpsons
’ Comic Book Guy held a master’s in literary criticism?
By:
JON MEYER
Breaking the spell:
Harry Potter’s story comes to an end — but will readers, or reading, ever be the same?
How did a “children’s story” become the literary epic of our time?
By:
JOYCE MILLMAN
Bound and gagged:
Lisa See gets tied up in the Qing
Girl meets boy; girl loses boy; girl wins boy back. It’s an old story, and it usually works, even when it’s set halfway around the world and the girl and boy are 17th-century Qing Dynasty aristocrats.
By:
CLEA SIMON
Cold comforts:
Miranda July’s performance pieces
In photographs, indie wünderwaif Miranda July stares back at us with big, wet blue eyes, curls dangling about her face, lips glistening and parted just so.
By:
NINA MACLAUGHLIN
Mystic rivers:
When G.I. Gurdjieff came to Boston
Was Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff a charlatan?
By:
JAMES PARKER
Good eatin’:
Barbara Kingsolver grows her own
In 2005, author Barbara Kingsolver moved her family from Tucson to a farm in Virginia to embark on a year-long experiment of returning to nature.
By:
DEIRDRE FULTON
Heat waves:
Summer reads to cool off with
“Summer joys are spoilt by use,” wrote John Keats, meaning the less you do between June and August, the better.
By:
JOHN FREEMAN
The man who knew too much:
Philip K. Dick enters the Library of America
Around the age of 13, Philip K. Dick started having a recurring dream.
By:
PETER KEOUGH
Ice and fire:
Ice Cream’s cold contemporary art, Burning Man’s hot stuff
Burning Man began as a San Francisco pyromaniacs’ beach party in 1986.
By:
GREG COOK
Sifting the trash heap:
Things I love about the gold and the garbage in comics
There’s an image in an old
Warlock
comic book by Jim Starlin that sums up a lot of the peculiar, shared pleasure of reading comics.
By:
DOUGLAS WOLK
Wall jumpers:
Frederick Taylor’s Berlin story
In the center section of Frederick Taylor’s book about the Berlin Wall, there’s a November 1989 photograph of rows of Berliners straddling the high cement barrier.
By:
ELLEE DEAN
Lucky leader:
A worthy life of Kingsley Amis
Eight hundred pages long, with another 200 pages of notes,
The Life of Kingsley Amis
is stunningly comprehensive.
By:
JAMES PARKER
Gumshoes and golems:
Michael Chabon’s Alaskan-Yiddish noir
Michael Chabon has boundary issues.
By:
CLEA SIMON
After the Gold Rush:
Michael Ondaatje’s memory plays
Michael Ondaatje builds his new novel,
Divisadero
, around a triad of characters.
By:
DANA KLETTER
Jane II:
The further adventures of Austen wanna-bes
No sooner had I finished last week’s review than Shannon Hale’s
Austenland
turned up on my desk.
By:
JEFFREY GANTZ
What would Jane do?:
A guide to Miss Austen's world
You’ll learn how to dress, how to pay a morning call, how to behave at a dinner party.
By:
JEFFREY GANTZ
Poetic injustice:
This life of Donne leaves out the art
John Donne’s poetic reputation was in pretty bad shape till T.S. Eliot came along.
By:
RICHARD BECK
The diamond patriot:
Bill Nowlin's Ted Williams at War
The plane shook. The cockpit coruscated with distress lights. And Ted Williams realized the landing gear was stuck.
By:
MIKE MILIARD
Don’t be afraid of the Dark:
Murakami’s noirish novel is playful, too
The typical Haruki Murakami protagonist is torn between women who are unattainably gorgeous and those who are just unbelievably cute.
An excerpt from Murakami's
After Dark
(mp3)
By:
ED SIEGEL
Getting spooked:
Charles McCarry looks back at the Nazis — and ahead to Bush?
The politics of celebrated spy-novel writer (and one-time deep-cover CIA operative) Charles McCarry aren’t simplistic.
By:
CLIF GARBODEN
Going under Down Under:
Richard Flanagan’s fish in a barrel
Everybody loves an outlaw, and Richard Flanagan is no exception.
By:
CLEA SIMON
Death becomes him:
Nathan Englander returns . . . at last
The combination of a gift for narrative, a proclivity for pathos, and a lode of arcane knowledge is put to great use in Nathan Englander’s first novel.
By:
DANA KLETTER
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., 1922-2007:
The man who fell to earth
By the time he died on April 11 at the age of 84, Kurt Vonnegut was lauded more as a cultural icon than for literary accomplishment.
By:
JON GARELICK
Over the top:
Rick Veitch sends Sgt. Rock to ‘Afbaghistan’
“Your life. Your war.”
By:
DOUGLAS WOLK
One hell of a socialite:
Pat Montandon's eccentric new memoir
Summer of ’63 with Sinatra, three-times a divorcee, and a gold cape cut from the curtains of the old San Francisco opera house.
By:
ELLEE DEAN
Best buildings:
Traveling with architecture
Most travel guides are little more than lists of colorless places in which to waste your money and sanitized tourist traps in which to waste your time.
By:
DAVID EISEN
Engine of dreams:
Tatyana Tolstaya lives up to her name
Reviews of Tatyana Tolstaya are stuffed with adjectives that strain to capture the vigorous joy of her prose or the terrible engine of her imagery.
By:
DANA KLETTER
Deadly art:
Sorting out the life and career of Leni Riefenstahl
It’s tempting to see two new biographies of Leni Riefenstahl and assume they’ll push the envelope, and expose the dirt about her personal life.
By:
MICHAEL BRONSKI
Noncombatants:
Two novels about the war at home
It’s perhaps understandable that what we think of as “the war novel” has become synonymous with stories set in the midst of combat.
By:
CHARLES TAYLOR
Rhyme schemes:
Some 'Poetry Month' bon-bons
In honor of poetry month, these books have been plucked from the torrent.
By:
WILLIAM CORBETT
Heart of the matter:
Doc Pomus’s blues
Even among the oddballs of the music business, Doc Pomus was unusual.
By:
JEFF TAMARKIN
Jerusalem Jane Doe:
Yehoshua’s undead in Israel
Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua’s
A Woman in Jerusalem
is an odd, perplexing novel — but also shrewd and profound.
By:
CHARLES TAYLOR
Sideways:
Lethem heads to the Left Coast
For his rock-and-roll novel
You Don’t Love Me Yet
, Brooklyn author Jonathan Lethem went west. No, not to Staten Island. Think farther. A lot farther. Los Angeles.
By:
IAN SANDS
In Bods we trust:
Kennedy’s new book explores the first F-to-M sex change
Issues of identity have captivated Somerville author Pagan Kennedy since her days as an Allstonite ’zine pioneer back in the mid ’80s.
By:
NINA MACLAUGHLIN
“A” list:
Mary Ann Sorrentino on the right to choose
Long-time abortion rights advocate Mary Ann Sorrentino didn’t write
The A Word
to change anyone’s pro-life stance.
By:
JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ
Babbling books:
Chabon, Murakami, Bukowski, and more
April comes like an idiot, Edna St. Millay wrote, babbling and strewing flowers.
By:
JOHN FREEMAN
Pop elegy:
Critic Rob Sheffield comes to terms with the death of his musical soul mate in Love Is a Mix Tape
If every generation has its
Love Story
, its tragic tale of romance and loss, then Rob Sheffield’s
Love Is a Mix Tape
is that book for those who came of age with indie rock.
By:
CLEA SIMON
The who behind What:
Podcast: Dave Eggers, Samantha Power, and Valentino Achak Deng discuss What Is the What
Listen to a discussion with Dave Eggers, Samantha Power, and Valentino Achak Deng, recorded at Harvard's Memorial Hall on February 26, 2007
By:
NINA MACLAUGHLIN
Sorrow floats:
Chris Adrian reckons with human suffering in his new book The Children’s Hospital
Chris Adrian is trying to figure out how to bring people back to life.
By:
NINA MACLAUGHLIN
Indulge me:
How the writer of a generation stopped speaking for himself
If Dave Eggers’s career is any indication, the best way to become a writer of importance is to convince everyone you’re a self-indulgent jerk and then pull the rug out from under them.
By:
CHRISTOPHER GRAY
It’s all true:
A year in non-fiction
Here’s a selection of non-fiction books that the Phoenix liked this year, in alphabetical order by author.
By:
JON GARELICK
Tales of the times:
A year in fiction
Here, listed alphabetically by author, are 10 of the best fiction and poetry books the
Phoenix
wrote about in 2006.
By:
JON GARELICK
More the mystery:
Kate Atkinson’s fear of genre
What’s the big deal about Kate Atkinson? If you read the rapturous reviews of her previous novel,
Case Histories
, you’d conclude she had written an engrossing mystery that was, you know, more than just a mystery.
By:
CHARLES TAYLOR
Our real founding father?:
A lawyer’s story of John Cooke
It’s just plain too bad John Cooke is not around anymore.
By:
JEFF INGLIS
Light reading:
Thomas Pynchon’s up Against the Day
Maybe writers should avoid the light, whether describing its effect or analyzing its nature, and instead leave it to experts like painters and physicists to worry about.
By:
PETER KEOUGH
BLOGS
OUTSIDE THE FRAME
Funny Gamesnanship
posted at 7:18 PM / 10.26.2007
Terror campaign
posted at 6:23 PM / 10.24.2007
More Lust, More Caution: Ang Lee II
posted at 6:11 PM / 10.10.2007
Cautionary tale: Lee on "Lust"
posted at 4:38 PM / 10.5.2007
BOOKS: WORD UP
This Thing Is A Lot Like That Thing
posted at 3:53 PM / 10.19.2007
Friday Literary Links: Ungrateful Edition
posted at 12:26 PM / 10.12.2007
Wednesday: Iron Chef Morimoto at the BU Barnes & Noble
posted at 6:30 PM / 10.9.2007
Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night
posted at 11:13 AM / 10.5.2007
MORE BLOGS . . .
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