A Magical Realist and His Reality A Magical Realist and His Reality
As ways of writing about a past, memoirs and autobiographies, although in practice they may often overlap, are different undertakings.
Jan 8, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Perry Anderson
Murder, She Wrote Murder, She Wrote
On the page, Patricia Highsmith could inspire a law-abiding citizen to become a willing accomplice to murder, at least within the realm of the imagination.
Nov 20, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Kera Bolonik
Memoirs of a Revolutionist Memoirs of a Revolutionist
Who can recall the late Stokely Carmichael's first name and not associate it with the two most incendiary words of the 1960s, Black Power?
Nov 20, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Norman Kelley
Starting Out in the ’50s Starting Out in the ’50s
The best memoirs of recent years reveal "The Way We Live Now" as well as or better than most contemporary fiction.
Oct 23, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Dan Wakefield
The Life of the Party The Life of the Party
Interesting Times is a curiously feeble title for an autobiography, rather as if Noam Chomsky were to write an article called "Could America Do Better?" It carries, of co...
Aug 28, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Terry Eagleton
Our Man in Jazz Our Man in Jazz
Not many people can say they changed the world and make it stick. In Myself Among Others: A Life in Music, George Wein does.
Jun 26, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Gene Santoro
Secrets and Lies Secrets and Lies
You would hope that the passage of fifty years might have cleared the passions that once inflamed the Rosenberg case.
Jun 26, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Philip Weiss
The Everything Expert The Everything Expert
Toward the end of his memoir, My Brother's Keeper, Amitai Etzioni recounts meeting with the political consultant Dick Morris.
Jun 26, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Robert S. Boynton
The Believer The Believer
A reader knowing nothing of the 1990s might well come away from Sidney Blumenthal's lengthy account of The Clinton Wars with the impression that for eight years, Bill and Hilla...
Jun 5, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Tom Wicker
The Unrepentant Modernist The Unrepentant Modernist
Near the end of Parallels and Paradoxes, a recent collection of dialogues on music and society between the conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim, music director of the Chicago...
May 29, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Russell Platt