I’ll begin with a pair of quotes. Tim O’Brien, in his memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone, says, “Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.” And J.M. Coetzee, from his Diary of a Bad Year, writes: “The generation of . . .
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Falling into PlaceCatherine ReidBeacon Press, February 2014 Presiding over Catherine Reid’s lyrical collection of essays, Falling into Place, is a naturalist who questions both the great web of technology and the old-fashioned policies that still dominate in twenty-first century America. Under the spell of this book, I felt as if I were entering into . . .
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Let me be more specific: by “you,” I mean us. US civilians. Fire and Forget’s “short stories from the long war” are each written by an American with intimate experience of our most recent military campaigns, and you need to read them. And, yes, “campaign” is the right word. 1) Because you don’t . . .
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“Witty and incisive, but insubstantial.” Somewhere someone must have a rule that says never begin a review by citing another review. And yet here I simply can’t resist, in part because the Kirkus Review’s final word on Tabish Khair’s brilliant new book, How to Fight Islamic Terror from the Missionary Position, explicitly retreads its earlier . . .
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A Review of Benjamin Hollander’s In The House Un-American It would be one thing if not fitting in in America were something clear. For Puerto Rican Jew Carlos ben Carlos Rossman—the main character in Benjamin Hollander’s new book In The House Un-American—if not fitting in were something he could put his finger on, he . . .
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I discovered Anselm Kiefer around the same time as I saw Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire and I’ve been occasionally obsessed with both ever since. Kiefer and Wenders are linked in my mind not only by the accident of timing but also by angels; Wings of Desire follows an angel who tires of consoling the spirits . . .
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“True genius can get an idea across even to an inferior mind.She imagined that she took his remorse in hand and changedit into a deeper understanding of life. She took all his shameaway and turned it into something useful.” —Flannery O’Connor, “Good Country People” Good poems are hard to find. A good . . .
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The Art of Grace Williams Grace Williams, Global Warming (2010) In the Augusta Savage Gallery in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, a radiant jewel box awaits. If you enter, it will change as you change. Even if you don’t, it will be there, shifting and shimmering in . . .
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A Review-in-Limericks Beer does not resemble wine so much as it resembles music. – Garrett Oliver October’s upon us once more!But before you head out to the barTo assuage your Fall thirst,Hit the library firstSo you won’t imbibe brew that’s subpar. O Lolita may trip down the tongue,But fine beer takes a path more . . .
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In Ruth Ozeki’s intricate novel, A Tale for the Time Being, there are multiple strands running through the narrative, themes that span generations and continents. Nestled among the meditations on Buddhism, time, and cats is a powerful story of a young Japanese woman who is struggling to find a place for herself in the . . .
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