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
White Teeth White Teeth
Norman Rush's first novel, Mating (1991), opens with a nervous but gripping epigram: "In Africa, you want more, I think." The speaker, an unnamed American anthropologist who do...
Jun 26, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Michael Wood
The Critical Imagination The Critical Imagination
James Wood, the ferociously intelligent critic whose reviews appear regularly in The New Republic and the London Review of Books, has single-handedly done a great deal to impro...
Jun 12, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Brian Morton
Wrestling With Augie March Wrestling With Augie March
Editor's Note: With Leonard Kriegel's meditation on Saul Bellow's 1953 novel The Adventures of Augie March, we introduce a series of occasional essays revisiting classic works of l...
Jun 5, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Leonard Kriegel
A Chef in Love A Chef in Love
As the bombs cease falling on Baghdad, and the world argues over an American presence in Iraq, the publication of Diana Abu-Jaber's funny, thoughtful second novel, Crescent, se...
May 29, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Charlotte Innes
Briefly Noted Briefly Noted
THE QUALITY OF LIFE REPORT: A Novel. By Meghan Daum. Viking. 309 pp. $24.95.
May 29, 2003 / Books & the Arts / The Nation
The Mark of Cain The Mark of Cain
Somewhere, and it's not in this new Everyman's Library edition, James M. Cain betrayed a state secret when he said that "a writer can only write two hours a day." The truth in ...
May 29, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Michael Tolkin
What Are They Reading? What Are They Reading?
"Birds of America," by Lorrie Moore
May 25, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Shayna Cohen
The Misuses of Allegory The Misuses of Allegory
Is José Saramago an anti-Semite?
May 15, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Ilan Stavans
The Intuitionist The Intuitionist
Writers write by trying to find out what it is they're writing.
May 1, 2003 / Books & the Arts / E.L. Doctorow