Shelf Life Shelf Life
Antal Szerb and the world’s stubborn magic.
Jan 21, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Peter C. Baker
The Lower Depths The Lower Depths
Damián Szifron’s Wild Tales is a carnival of melancholy, melodrama and the polymorphously perverse.
Jan 14, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Inoculation as Metaphor Inoculation as Metaphor
Eula Biss’s On Immunity is a slipshod book full of brilliant moments.
Jan 14, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Hannah Gold
Speed Kills Speed Kills
Has digital technology destroyed leisure?
Jan 14, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow
Less Is More Less Is More
The dense details in Berlin’s memorial museums overwhelm the stories they try to tell.
Jan 14, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Julia M. Klein
Faith and Suspicion: On Marilynne Robinson’s ‘Lila’ Faith and Suspicion: On Marilynne Robinson’s ‘Lila’
The novelist offers an elegant answer to the question, “What is it to be human?”
Jan 7, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Roxana Robinson
A Conversation With Marilynne Robinson A Conversation With Marilynne Robinson
The novelist talks about liberalism, the language of fiction, and the humanism of John Calvin.
Jan 7, 2015 / Books & the Arts / The Nation
Gunboy Gunboy
killing the child said became like drinking water clean or clean enough though one says that one is part of everything there is a conflict there is a resistance involved this for that that life for this a finger to the lips or to the trigger the revolver is vulgar in the boy’s hands decorated with beads the weapon turns over like a word on the tongue bella bellum the war of all against all the beauty of all against all to emerge from emergency form out of force equal to all those bodies bathed in that free water
Jan 7, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Beth Bachmann
The Picasso Variations The Picasso Variations
Why the painter’s late work veers from the sloppy to the sublime.
Jan 7, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky
Censor This? Censor This?
The bogus moral outrage over The Interview.
Jan 7, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Clover