Review: ‘Shovel Ready’ by Adam Sternbergh
Adam Sternbergh's debut novel, "Shovel Ready," is awesome. I know that's not a real professional-critic type lead, but I figure once you hear the plot description — garbageman turns hit...
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On criticism: Why read reviews?
In my late teens and early twenties, my judgments of certain films and records were not my own, which didn't prevent me from spouting them with a no doubt ridiculous...
How perfectly strung-together words can delight the ear
On the second page of William Gaddis' "The Recognitions," one of those unplumbed novels that accuse me from my shelves, the following sentences unspool themselves: The ship's surgeon was a...
Review: ‘Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: Christmas on Bear Mountain’ by Carl Barks
The man appears to be concerned about money, mainly. He can't afford to buy Christmas presents for his nephews. He has a rich uncle who's notoriously penny-pinching. The man concocts...
Review: ‘The Big New Yorker Book of Cats’ with foreword by Anthony Lane
V.S. Naipaul, who wrote one of my two favorite novels, "A House for Mr. Biswas," is not exactly known for his winning personality — even many of his admirers find...
Review: ‘White Girls’ by Hilton Als
Probably the least important thing worth saying about Hilton Als' "White Girls" is that it's the best book of the year. I think it is, but these essays — hostile,...
Poetry collections that caught our attention in 2013
What are years? They're periods at whose conclusions — someone more adept at research than I should find out when this started — critics compile best-of lists. The one I...
Review: ‘Hild’ by Nicola Griffith
The promotional materials for award-winning sci-fi and mystery author Nicola Griffith's new doorstop of historical fiction, "Hild," read in part: "As in Hilary Mantel's 'Wolf Hall' and Sigrid Undset's 'Kristin...
Re-reading Susan Sontag’s work vital, maddening
Susan Sontag was often an arrogant, unsubtle, dull, pompous, ridiculous writer. Who else would have included the following in an essay on visiting North Vietnam at the height of the...
Review: ‘The Abominable’ by Dan Simmons
A friend writes: "Paranoiacs often project their craziness onto fundamentalism (which they conflate with religion per se) rather than onto capitalism, which is the long-governing force behind fundamentalism." She is...