By Chauncey MabeIf 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 … [Read more...]
Book review: Harrowing tale of life behind bars remarkably even-handed
By Bill Williams Wilbert Rideau was 19 when he impulsively decided to rob a bank in Lake Charles, La., so he could flee to a new life on the West Coast. The botched 1961 robbery ended with Rideau taking three hostages. In the ensuing chaos he fatally shot and stabbed a female bank teller.Rideau was black and the victim was white, and a seething mob nearly … [Read more...]
Books feature: Renowned translator of Japanese literature moves to China’s ‘source of sources’
William Scott Wilson.By Chauncey Mabe 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 … [Read more...]
Book review: ‘White People’ examines dispiriting history of racial constructs
By Chauncey MabeThe 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 … [Read more...]
Book review: Banville’s latest a wizardly look at gods and man
By Chauncey MabeThe 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 … [Read more...]
Book review: Tale of cell line’s ‘mother’ astonishes
By Bill WilliamsBefore the publication of this book, few people other than scientists had ever heard of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black woman who died of cancer in 1951.Lacks was a patient at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore when doctors, without her knowledge or consent, sliced cancerous tissue from her cervix for research purposes. To the astonishment of scientists, the … [Read more...]
Book review: DeLillo’s ‘Omega’ not worth the trouble
By Chauncey MabeSo 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 … [Read more...]
ArtsPaper Interview: Doris Kearns Goodwin, on Lincoln and LBJ
Doris Kearns Goodwin. (Illustration by Pat Crowley)By Chauncey MabeDoris 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 … [Read more...]
Books feature: Chris Bohjalian, novelist of empathy
Novelist Chris Bohjalian.By Chauncey MabeEmpathy 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 … [Read more...]
Book review: A master novelist looks at Caribbean society from below
By Chauncey Mabe 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 … [Read more...]