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
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 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 Read More
A Changed Man, by Francine Prose. HarperCollins, 421 pages, $24.95.
“What did the blind man say the first time he touched a matzoh?”
(Beat.)
“Who wrote this shit?”
Ba-da-bing! It’s never a bad sign when a novelist feels expansive enough to toss a couple of irreverent jokes into the mix. In the case Read More
Prep , 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 Read More
Bad 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 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 Read More
Judy 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
