Is That All There Is? Is That All There Is?
It's hard to resist the misery of V.S. Naipaul's late fiction, hard not to surrender to its bleak and wary authority.
Dec 9, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Michael Wood
Body Heat Body Heat
After the Kinsey Report but before the first Penthouse Forum, John Updike wrote, "He kneels in a kind of sickness between her spread legs.
Dec 2, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Mark Lotto
Of Love and Other Demons Of Love and Other Demons
The first chapter of Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote follows our hero's adventures from 1936 through 1948, a particularly heady period of his life.
Nov 24, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Nathaniel Rich
The Shock of the Old The Shock of the Old
These remarks introduced a centennial tribute to Isaac Bashevis Singer in October at the 92nd Street Y in New York.
Nov 24, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Morris Dickstein
The Good Girl The Good Girl
In the past few decades, Russell Banks has established himself as one of America's most important living writers, one of a handful with the daring and the talent to plumb our his...
Nov 24, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Deborah Scroggins
Imitation of Life Imitation of Life
To return to Chekhov in this cultural moment makes you feel as if you were experiencing spring in Russia.
Nov 24, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Lee Siegel
The Counter-Life The Counter-Life
Philip Roth is a miracle of modern medicine.
Nov 4, 2004 / Books & the Arts / James Wolcott
About Henry About Henry
Henry James is not a name that springs to mind when we think of adventure stories, prose epics or historical fiction.
Oct 14, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Brenda Wineapple
This Canadian Life This Canadian Life
The reviewer's galley of Natasha, David Bezmozgis's short-story collection about a Russian émigré family in Toronto, begins with words not from the writer but the p...
Sep 30, 2004 / Books & the Arts / D.T. Max