The Scrivener and the Whale The Scrivener and the Whale
Andrew Delbanco's new biography of Herman Melville reveals that the great writer came to realize that what torments men is not the longing to believe that there is meaning in the u...
Nov 17, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Vivian Gornick
Hail Mary Hail Mary
A new biography of one of the Enlightment's most remarkable thinkers.
May 26, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Vivian Gornick
About a Boy About a Boy
Jonathan Safran Foer, wunderkind.
Apr 7, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Vivian Gornick
Stanton’s Wisdom Stanton’s Wisdom
One afternoon in January 1892, in a packed convention hall in Washington, DC, the 76-year-old Elizabeth Cady Stanton rose from her seat to address the annual meeting of the Natio...
Dec 22, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Vivian Gornick
Lost in America Lost in America
In no literature in the world has the immigrant novel been more varied, more original, more persistent than in ours--and this for the most obvious of reasons.
Nov 24, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Vivian Gornick
Wild at Heart Wild at Heart
In 1947 Saul Bellow published a novel called The Victim in which a derelict character named Kirby Allbee haunts another named Asa Leventhal, claiming that Leventhal is responsibl...
May 27, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Vivian Gornick
Charlotte’s Web Charlotte’s Web
In 1890 the American feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote a remarkable short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," about a woman--genteel, educated, with more than a casual taste f...
Jul 17, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Vivian Gornick