Naomi Wolf was on the phone on Feb. 24 speaking about her cover story in this week’s New York , in which she accuses literary scholar Harold Bloom of having placed his “heavy, boneless hand” on her inner thigh when she was an undergraduate student in 1983. In it, she also depicted Yale University as Read More
“It’ll take a while,” Adam Moss, the newly installed editor in chief of New York magazine, told Off the Record. “People will be disappointed by the magazine for a while-only because the expectations now, I guess, are pretty high.”
It was Monday, Feb. 16, three days after Mr. Moss was officially taken off the payroll Read More
McSweeney’s with milk and cookies; host warms up city’s icy literary tribe; Plimpton, Bloom figure prominently
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 Read More
Wednesday 16th
Our vacation is over, and we’re back and better(-looking) than ever …. Things that transpired in our sweaty absence: Express came out with new flat-front slacks called “The Editor,” apparently unaware that the female editors in this town are more apt to dress like strippers than career gals; a golf cart camouflaged Read More
I think, on reflection, that it would be a good thing if we could agree to a moratorium on all productions of Shakespeare that are set in the Wild West.
Rest assured, I’ve nothing against cowboys. How manly they can look on the range, with their 10-gallon hats and bull whips. I would also hope Read More
How to Read and Why , by Harold Bloom. Scribner, 283 pages, $25.
Ignore the headline. The true title of this review is “How to Read Harold Bloom and Why,” and I will proceed exactly so: first the how, then the why.
Open your Bloom anywhere (there are now two dozen titles to choose Read More
After cooling his heels for six years, Tom Waits has returned. If you care about the man’s last two decades of music, well, you’ll care about this album, too. But know this: Mule Variations (Anti/Epitaph), Mr. Waits’ latest meditation on whether a jukebox is sadder than a coffin, is no weird masterpiece like his mid-80′s Read More
The brilliant critic Christopher Ricks, the Oxbridge-bred interpreter of both T.S. Eliot and Bob Dylan, is perhaps best known for his earlier work on John Keats, the one with the peculiar title Keats and Embarrassment . A work inspired in part by the profusion of blushing in Keats’ poetry. And embarrassment, I blush to say, Read More
