By all accounts—most notably the amusingly disenchanted commentaries by Caryn James, David Carr and Paula Schwartz in The New York Times—this year’s Oscars will be considerably less uncertainty-laden than usual, particularly in the four acting categories. This is to say that Helen Mirren (in The Queen), Forest Whitaker (in The Last King of Scotland), and Read More
Rising Up and Rising Down , by William T. Vollmann. McSweeney’s, 3,298 pages, $120.
If you’re so inclined, you can probably go ahead and tell people you’ve read William Vollmann’s latest, a spry, seven-volume, 3,298-page examination of the ethical justifications for violence. You’ll probably get away with it-unless, that is, you end up talking Read More
The Man Who Tried to Save the World: The Dangerous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Fred Cuny , by Scott Anderson. Doubleday, 374 pages, $24.95.
One can readily imagine that the frustrated, overwhelmed fleet of relief agencies struggling to manage the exodus of refugees from Kosovo dearly misses an old friend, Fred Cuny, and his Read More
Gus Van Sant Jr.’s Good Will Hunting , from a screenplay by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, has had more favorable “buzz” than possibly any other film this season outside of James Cameron’s The Titanic . Happily, both films live up to the buzz, at least to my ears and eyes. But after all, what Read More
