On a September evening of the late aughts, Karita Mattila was singing in Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.
Fifty years from now, the next Edith Wharton, if she could have seen the crowd that gathered to see Ms. Mattila on the evening of Sept. 21, 2009, could easily begin her great Read More
Readers of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth have debated the death of its heroine, Lily Bart for decades. Did she commit suicide or die of an accidental overdose? A new letter, written by Ms. Wharton herself, may have some answers.
Only on the second page does Wharton Read More
The night of April 8 is going be a big, big, BIG one for HBO. The Sopranos return (finally) for the beginning of the end of the eight-year-old series; parties will be given, volumes will be written, and hand-wringing will ensue over the prospect of a David Chase–free television future. But before we fall to Read More
It’s a season of cliffhangers. Who will emerge as top dog in a transatlantic face-off when Don DeLillo and Ian McEwan each publish a new novel on the very same day? Will anyone come up with a better title for a book about working moms than The Feminine Mistake, by Vanity Fair writer Leslie Bennetts Read More
Autumn of the Moguls: My Misadventures with the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys Who Mastered and Messed Up Big Media , by Michael Wolff. HarperCollins, 381 pages, $25.95.
In 1980, George W.S. Trow, a veteran New Yorker staff writer and one of the founding editors of The National Lampoon, published a 25,000-word jeremiad decrying Read More
Terence Davies’ The
House of Mirth , from his own screenplay, based on the novel by Edith
Wharton, is one of several end-of-year releases that has made 2000 a better
movie-going year than anyone could have anticipated at the beginning of
December. The best movies, by and large, remain individualized productions that
seldom zoom into Read More
Lafeu: ‘Twas a good lady, ’twas a good lady: we may pick a thousand salads were we light on such another herb.
Clown: Indeed, sir, she was the sweet marjoram of the salad, or rather the herb of grace.
Lafeu: They are not herbs, you knave; they are nose herbs.
Clown: I am Read More
