If Harold Kushner had been a literary critic instead of a rabbi, he might have asked, “Why do bad books happen to good writers?” And if Leo Tolstoy had also been a critic, he might have answered, “All good books are alike, while every bad book goes bad in its own way.” These bloody thoughts are occasioned by Henning Mankel and Jim Crace, novelists of proven quality who have … [Read more...]
Eminent translator of Japanese turns to China’s ‘source of sources’
After the Bible, the Tao Te Ching is the second most translated text in the world, and certainly it is the most famous and influential book of ancient Chinese wisdom in the West. Why, then, with dozens of versions already available, would we need a new one – especially by a translator who made his name in classical Japanese samurai literature? “My friends all ask that same … [Read more...]
‘White People’ examines dispiriting history of racial constructs
The spectacle of Americans choking with rage at Tea Parties, or tossing around racist epithets at Sarah Palin rallies, has our European friends worried. Recently, French journalist Jean-Sebastien Stehli, writing in Le Figaro, bemoaned the “climate of violence” in American politics, which he identifies as white fear and resentment at the rise of a black president. Nativist … [Read more...]
Banville’s latest a wizardly look at gods and man
The modern literary novelist faces two large difficulties. One is how to write something worth reading, a story perhaps, invoking, perhaps, the human condition, without recourse to the worn-out conventions of realistic narrative fiction (a situation brilliantly discussed by James Wood in the March 15 edition of The New Yorker). The second problem is what might be called the … [Read more...]
DeLillo’s ‘Omega’ not worth the trouble
So many unkind ways to begin a discussion of Don DeLillo’s new novel present themselves, I can hardly bring myself to choose. First and easiest: This should be called “Pointless Omega” (ba-bum!). Or how about: If you think $24 is a lot to spend for a 117-page novel, don’t worry, you’ll get your money’s worth -- because it reads like a thousand! But I suppose I should behave … [Read more...]
Doris Kearns Goodwin: On Lincoln, Obama and LBJ
By Chauncey Mabe Doris Kearns Goodwin is a historian with a great sense of timing. Already a Pulitzer Prize winner for No Ordinary Time, her 1995 dual biography of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Goodwin was basking in the fading glow of her 2005 Abraham Lincoln book, Team of Rivals, when she received a call from an upstart presidential candidate named Barack Obama. “He … [Read more...]
Chris Bohjalian, novelist of empathy
Empathy pays. In a confessional age, when the memoir has replaced the novel as the primary literary form, Chris Bohjalian is a bit of an anachronism. In one bestselling novel after another, he wields that always rare literary gift, the ability to create believable characters far removed from his own background and experience. Black children, transsexuals, homeless people, … [Read more...]
Master novelist looks at Caribbean society from below
Most of us have faded photos of grandparents or great-grandparents who seem as alien as creatures from another planet or denizens of a sunken civilization. “Fools in old-style hats and coats,” as Philip Larkin terms them in his famous poem This Be the Verse. In her latest novel, Guadeloupean writer Maryse Condé sets out to unearth, by dint of research, family legend and … [Read more...]
PB Poetry Festival begins somberly, ends in joy
In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing. About the dark times. -- Bertolt Brecht A somber tone dominated the sixth edition of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, with the distinguished faculty focusing on “poems of witness” and elegies for the dead. Yet by Saturday, the busy last day of the festival, the atmosphere had turned almost … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Poetry Festival bigger than ever
Miles Coon did not build the Palm Beach Poetry Festival into one of Florida’s top literary events in five short years by being cautious. After last year’s economically troubled festival, when one workshop had to be canceled for lack of enrollment, he knew prudence dictated a smaller, less ambitious plan for 2010. Instead, Coon chose a bolder path, increasing the … [Read more...]