Arts >>

Books

Echo chamber

Men are from Martin Amis, women are from . . . ?
As Under-Secretary of the Ted Hughes Rough Riders (Boston Chapter), I have been delighted by two recent developments.

By: JAMES PARKER | May 04, 2010

Comedy life saver
In Satiristas! veteran comic Paul Provenza engages in revealing, surprising conversation with a diverse group about comedy’s role in revealing uncomfortable truths about our world and ourselves.

By: ROB TURBOVSKY | May 04, 2010

Interview: Daniel Clowes

On going from Enid to Wilson
"If you had told me then that there would be cute girls coming to comic conventions in 15 years, I would’ve told you you were out of your mind."

By: MIKE MILIARD | April 27, 2010

Play ball!

Or, what’s in the Dominican water?
Red Sox fans are well versed in the creation myths of the team’s Dominican stars.

By: MIKE MILIARD | April 27, 2010

Life after Pi

Yann Martel’s next allegory
In contemporary literature, the Holocaust is the okapi in the room: looming and somehow irresistible.

By: CLEA SIMON | April 13, 2010

Hearts of glass

Ali Shaw’s modern fairy tale
In Ali Shaw’s debut novel, death by glass becomes a star-crossed love story in the vein of a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale — a tragedy that strips away its isolated characters’ fears and defenses and reveals their bravery.

By: SHARON STEEL | April 06, 2010

Eat, pray, shove

Cooking with Mailer in two new memoirs
So after all the roarings and the thumpings and the garlands and the scandals, after all the sex and the jazz and the fires on the moon and the women’s-libbers howling for his blood and the glass bouncing off Gore Vidal’s head, the old lion ends his days in comfortable domesticity on the crooked fingertip of Cape Cod, nibbling teriyaki-infused oatmeal and reading baseball statistics on the crapper.

By: JAMES PARKER | March 30, 2010

Interview: Tamler Sommers

Philosophically speaking
One of the most enjoyable by-products of lit mag the Believer ’s many long, unconventional interviews has been the collection A Very Bad Wizard: Morality Behind the Curtain , by 39-year-old University of Houston philosophy professor Tamler Sommers.

By: JON GARELICK | March 25, 2010

Otherworldly

Brad Watson’s aliens
The characters in Brad Watson’s new short-story collection tune in to unearthly energies and heed otherworldly guidance, but they are, finally, all too human — just looking for a little transcendence.

By: SUSAN CHAMANDY | March 23, 2010

Return to sender

Challah Back Dept.
Sure, we've all gotten an unwelcome fruitcake or fluorescent sweater in the mail, usually from a well-meaning and slightly out-of-touch relative. But few New England Jews could have been prepared for the surprise "gift" that recently arrived on their doorsteps courtesy of Georgia-based messianic former businessman Sid Roth.

By: KARA BASKIN | March 22, 2010

Tired sleuth

Can Walter Mosley kick the crime-novel habit?
Has Walter Mosley gone off crime fiction? With the creation of Easy Rawlins in 1990, Mosley perfected the African-American side of the genre — along with a poetic and insightful take on post-war LA up through the 1960s — in 11 consistently solid books, the most recent coming out in 2007.

By: CLEA SIMON | March 16, 2010

Nasty fun

Sam Lipsyte asks and tells
In his books Venus Drive , The Subject Steve , and Home Land , novelist and short-story writer Sam Lipsyte revels in rage.

By: ALEX BLUM | March 11, 2010

Walkin' and talkin'

Unguided Zen-like tours through NYC
It counts as some small death, the blinders-on result of routine, when instead of noticing how the light hits the river or the man in front of the noodle shop crouches as if he'd got no bones, your thoughts pinball from your sandwich to an e-mail you want to write to a ticking of your to-do list.

By: NINA MACLAUGHLIN | March 09, 2010

Booking it

Fiction, non-fiction, poetry
Spring fiction goes international, starting with a whiff of the Caribbean.

By: BARBARA HOFFERT | March 11, 2010

Excerpt: Patti Smith's Just Kids

Rock icon Patti Smith recalls burroughs and Mapplethorpe, the early days of CBGB, and saddling up for Horses in this memoir excerpt
The stars were lining up to enter the Ziegfeld Theatre for the glittering premiere of the film Ladies & Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones. I was excited to be there.

By: PATTI SMITH | March 03, 2010

OMG, blame him

Holy Finger-Pointing
With religion being responsible for so many of the conflicts currently plaguing the world, it's good to see that some people are finally pointing the blame finger skyward.

By: MARIANNA FAYNSHTEYN | March 03, 2010

Good company

Inspector Montalbano might be the friend you haven't met
One of the attractions of our getting hooked on a series of novels with a recurring protagonist is the reassurance that once every year or so we'll have a friend to catch up with. What we don't like to think about is how it'll feel when that friend is in bad shape.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | March 02, 2010