By Matthew Kassel 4/03 11:00am

books

living with shakespeare

On the Page: Shakespeare Edition

Living with Shakespeare: Essays by Writers, Actors, and Directors

Edited by Susannah Carson

Vintage, 528 pp., $16

It should come as no surprise that the best essays in Living With Shakespeare are by the writers, not the actors and directors listed in its subtitle. Overall, though, this 500-page collection left me unfulfilled: about a quarter of the way in, I found myself craving the real thing. Why am I getting Shakespeare secondhand, I thought, when I can just go straight to the source? Read More

By George Gurley 12/18/06 12:00am

2003 Power Punk: John Hodgman

John Hodgman was drinking a smoothie inside the cavernous Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Soon the 32-year-old would switch to rye whiskey. It was 7:30 p.m., and the place was filling up with the 100 or so people Mr. Hodgman has met during his 10 years in New York City. In 2001, he began Read More

By Adam Begley 8/21/06 12:00am

Kinder, Gentler Lit Crit, With Tips on ‘Real Life’

Remember when literary criticism was a frightening discipline, austere and combative? Its devotees were in the grip of implacable theory, or buried deep in the “text”—that sunless realm where books are forgotten, readers irrelevant and authors dead. Split into feuding factions, the high priests of lit crit were imposing figures who spoke in tongues, made Read More

By Adam Begley 7/25/05 12:00am

A Taut, Bloody Thriller, Philosophically Inflected

No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. Alfred A. Knopf, 309 pages, $24.95.

The first reaction is visceral, and should be recorded here before the critical faculty interposes to hedge and qualify: I was so thoroughly sucked in and freaked out by No Country for Old Men that whenever I had to put the Read More

By Adam Begley 7/25/05 12:00am

A Taut, Bloody Thriller, Philosophically Inflected

No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. Alfred A. Knopf, 309 pages, $24.95.

The first reaction is visceral, and should be recorded here before the critical faculty interposes to hedge and qualify: I was so thoroughly sucked in and freaked out by No Country for Old Men that whenever I had to put the Read More

By Alexandra Jacobs 5/02/05 12:00am

Up a Tree With Naomi Wolf-Meet Dad, the Marvelous Mentor

The Treehouse: Eccentric Wisdom From My Father on How to Live, Love, and See, by Naomi Wolf. Simon and Schuster, 278 pages, $24.

Naomi Wolf is one lucky lass. Oh, she’s had her share of troubles-like that time at Yale when Harold Bloom laid his “heavy, boneless” paw on her trembling undergraduate lap, traumatizing her Read More

By Richard Brookhiser 8/16/04 12:00am

Bush-Haters Speak Loudly, And in Unlikely Venues

How much do Bush-haters hate George W. Bush? Those who hated Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan swung the hammer pretty hard, but you probably have to remember Johnson and Nixon haters to recall so many rings of the bell. Pundits don’t count; we’re paid to get mad and to get even. The pulse of Bush Read More

By Jessica Joffe 3/22/04 12:00am

Eight Day Week

Wednesday 17th

St. Patrick’s Day! Well, both of us gals have pretty pasty complexions (though one of us is just about to jet off for spring break- ¡olé! ), so we’re not too psyched about this one day of the year when green is chic …. If you’re thirsting for real “culture,” the Irish Read More