Book Reviewing, African-American Style Book Reviewing, African-American Style
On April 14, my review of Maya Angelou's A Song Flung Up to Heaven appeared in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. I finally assessed the book thusly: In writing that is bad to ...
Aug 29, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Wanda Coleman
Mitchell Paints a Picture Mitchell Paints a Picture
In Empire Falls, Richard Russo’s neo-Dickensian novel of a dying mill-town in central Maine, the high school art teacher is portrayed as something of a soul-killer. Indiffere…
Aug 29, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto
Auteur, Auteur! Auteur, Auteur!
The streets of lower Manhattan are deserted--also spotlessly clean and glowing in the light of the golden hour--when the studio head takes the movie director outside to tell hi...
Aug 29, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Hey, He’s Bruce Hey, He’s Bruce
When Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, reunited to tour behind The Rising, came to Madison Square Garden on August 12, they juxtaposed "41 Shots," Springsteen's powerful so...
Aug 29, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Gene Santoro
In Cold Type In Cold Type
As summer winds down, retreats and vacations come to an end (no more toasted marshmallows) and regular life begins again, with everyday chores like buying new shoes for childre...
Aug 29, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Amy Wilentz
What Are They Reading? What Are They Reading?
THE EMPEROR OF OCEAN PARK.
By Stephen L. Carter.
Knopf. 657 pp. $26.95.
Aug 23, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Jon Wiener
Gilded Age II Gilded Age II
How did it all start? What triggered the 1990s political corruption, its inequality in wealth and its stock market bubble? This is the decade that Kevin Phillips rails against in ...
Aug 15, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Alice H. Amsden
Mary McCarthy at 90 Mary McCarthy at 90
Mary McCarthy would have turned 90 on June 21, a fact that is itself astonishing to those who remember her flagrant youth, when her sharp style made her the most feared and forthri...
Aug 15, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Morris Dickstein
‘Murder by Public Policy’ ‘Murder by Public Policy’
I am writing this review in the midst of a Chicago heat wave, almost exactly seven years after the heat disaster that killed nearly 800 people in the city. The Chicago Tribune's m...
Aug 15, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Micaela di Leonardo
The Play’s the Thing The Play’s the Thing
Like life itself, good movies sometimes change the subject on you in midparagraph. You think you're watching the story of an elderly man in mourning, buoying himself up against gr...
Aug 15, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans