Hyperbolic titles invite dissent. So here’s mine: What makes Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” “the poem that changed America,” as the cover of this essay collection proclaims?
Ginsberg might’ve responded by saying, as he did in a 1986 essay included here, that when San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore published “Howl” 50 years ago, changing America was part Read More
Hyperbolic titles invite dissent. So here’s mine: What makes Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” “the poem that changed America,” as the cover of this essay collection proclaims?
Ginsberg might’ve responded by saying, as he did in a 1986 essay included here, that when San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore published “Howl” 50 years ago, changing America Read More
Devils on the Deep Blue Sea: The Dreams, Schemes and Showdowns That Built America’s Cruise-Ship Empires, by Kristoffer A. Garin. Viking, 366 pages, $24.95.
I’ve never taken a Caribbean cruise, and I probably never will. It’s David Foster Wallace’s fault. His 1995 essay “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”—an uproarious dissection of seven Read More
Devils on the Deep Blue Sea: The Dreams, Schemes and Showdowns That Built America’s Cruise-Ship Empires, by Kristoffer A. Garin. Viking, 366 pages, $24.95.
I’ve never taken a Caribbean cruise, and I probably never will. It’s David Foster Wallace’s fault. His 1995 essay “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”—an uproarious dissection of seven Read More
On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (and Always Have) in the Future Tense , by David Brooks. Simon and Schuster, 304 pages, $25.
He’s back again: Intrepid explorer David Brooks has returned from that faraway place known as suburban America, a fantastic land where cars are big, malls bigger and super-value meals tremendous. Read More
MakingAmericans:Jewsandthe Broadway Musical, by Andrea Most. Harvard University Press, 253 pages, $29.95.
In the oft-quoted scene from Annie Hall , Woody Allen’s Alvy Singer recalls being asked, “Did you eat?” and hearing instead “Jew, eat?” It earns a hefty laugh; in kvetch- cum -comedy, nothing is funnier than the paranoid Jew who sees “Jew” Read More
Against Love: A Polemic , by Laura Kipnis. Pantheon, 224 pages, $24.
If scandals have their seasons, nothing suits summer like a steamy dose of adultery. This season we celebrate a cuckold, Hillary Clinton, whose top-dollar memoir renewed interest in the most delicious illicit affair of the 90′s. And we malign an adulterer (and accused Read More
Al on America , by Al Sharpton, with Karen Hunter. Kensington Publishing, 304 pages, $27.
Al Sharpton recently had a meeting with Al Sharpton. It was, he says, one of the most important events of his adult life, and it occurred in prison, during a 90-day sentence for protesting U.S. military bases in Vieques, Puerto Read More
