Category Archives: Blog

How then must we live, reader, and who do you love?

Update: Martin Amis, in an interview with Emma Brockes in The Guardian on September 16, 1917:  Now in their temporary residence, work continues. Even here, Amis notices he has mellowed somewhat. He used to be a terrible purist about the … Continue reading

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Ethan Canin, A Doubter’s Almanac

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

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.

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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Middlebrow furrowed

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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