Category Archives: All

Ethan Canin, A Doubter’s Almanac

Posted on February 19, 2016 by Ellen Akins

A Doubter’s Almanac by Ethan Canin (who’s very good, and, as Elaine May, doing her nagging mother routine, would say, that man is a DOCTOR), which I reviewed for the Minneapolis Star Tribune prompted a few further thoughts about what privileged knowledge means … Continue reading →

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Jane Smiley’s The Hundred Year Trilogy, concluded

Posted on February 5, 2016 by Ellen Akins

Golden Age completes Jane Smiley’s Last Hundred Years trilogy (though it won’t really be the last 100 years until 2020, when things promise to be pretty bleak). I reviewed this last volume for the Minneapolis Star Tribune–as I did the 1st 2 volumes … Continue reading →

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“We are risen apes, not fallen angels”: On being human, humane, & at home in the world.

Posted on February 5, 2016 by Ellen Akins

Here’s a review of another odd & lovely, allegory-inflected novel from (whose Beatrice & Virgil I also reviewed for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “The High Mountains of Portugal” is Ron Charles’s pick of the month at the Washington Post.

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Hope told a flattering tale

Posted on January 29, 2016 by Ellen Akins

In Military Memoirs of a Confederate: A Critical Narrative, the memoir Edward Porter Alexander wrote before editing and softening it into Fighting for the Confederacy, whose (unnumbered) pages look like this:           an observation: A military lesson is to … Continue reading →

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Middlebrow furrowed

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Ellen Akins

Meredith Jaffe, writing in the Guardian (11/4/15), asks: “Middlebrow? What’s so shameful about writing a book and hoping it sells well?” Reading a recent essay in the Sydney Review of Books, she says, “it’s difficult to work out who its … Continue reading →

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