SUCCINCTLY.
Category: Crit
Examination, interpretation, appreciation.
Journalism As Art Imitating Life
CAN WRITERS REPORT? THAT QUESTION nets a “yes” according to Daniel Elstrin in the June 19 Forward, reporting on the day Haaretz (think Israeli NYT) swapped its staff for 31 leading authors and poets: “Among those articles were gems like…
Happy Bloomsday!
105 YEARS AGO TODAY, LEO Bloom took his famous fictive walk through Dublin seeing the same places and eating the same foods as his latterday followers did, will do or have done today. (Me, I’ll be sitting on the floor…
Live Long and Kosh — er, Prosper
IT’S NOT ALWAYS NEWS WHEN a rabbi writes a book — but when he writes about Vulcans, Ferengi and Klingons, it’s bound to raise at least one fascinated eyebrow (I’m looking at you, Spock). Rabbi Yonassan Gershom‘s Jewish Themes In…
Invasion of the Sound Creatures
TITANIC THINGS ARE LURCHING ABOUT your neighborhood with awful speed and clumsiness — and by the time you finish reading this, you’ll hear them too. I speak not of the consequences attending long-term medication, nor of some Lovecraftian horror rolling…
Read This Book
THERE IS A Conversation THAT I’ve been having with a friend since we were both in high school, and the initial-cap in that word is due not to the colloquy’s duration but to its content. Its thesis is simple: that…
Re-Re-RE-Reads
SOME BOOKS ARE FINISHED IN a day; others, only when we are. If books are portable doorways, then stepping into a beloved-since-childhood instant Now every few years can sometimes tell us where we’ve been in the meanwhile. As one of…
Why Star Trek Worked — And Lord of the Rings Didn’t
THE ONLY THING THAT BUGGED me about the new Star Trek movie — and that only for the first 20 minutes — was that it didn’t look “retro” enough; as though Mr. Abrams’ idea of “early Star Trek” was taken…
Bookshelf: Larry Niven
ONE NICE THING ABOUT BEING laid up is the chance to reacquaint myself with some old childhood friends; e.g., Larry Niven and his Known Space series. For those who don’t know, Known Space is a 60-light-year-diameter bubble and a thousand…