You Wouldn't Believe It
A review of Bullet Park by John Cheever. There are people who believe that when writers pass middle age their imaginative power—like their sexual energy—tends to diminish. If they are good writers, the argument runs, they have learned their craft by this time, and so their later books have a carefully disciplined, if comparatively lifeless, quality. READ MORE >>
A Sort of Moby Dick
A review of Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth. READ MORE >>
A Sort of Moby Dick
Portnoy’s Complaint By Philip Roth (Random House, $6.95) READ MORE >>
Updike’s Twosomes
In his autobiography, Frank Harris tells us that J. M. W. Turner had done hundreds of paintings and watercolors of the female genitals. Supposedly, they were discovered after his death by his priggish executor, Ruskin, and burned. If all this is true, the world might well mourn the loss. What a marriage of artist and subject! Just think what the man who painted Sun Rising through Vapours might have achieved. Imagine the opening at the Museum of Modern Art. READ MORE >>
