Literature
February 08, 2012
Presciently Sad
The rediscovery of Joseph Roth has been one of the happiest literary developments of the last decade or so—perhaps the first time that the word “happy
January 30, 2012
The Pains of the Pioneers
Dorothy Thompson and Rebecca West were both women, and world-famous journalists, and politically outspoken, and involved with men who treated them bad
January 16, 2012
What is the Meaning of it, Watson?
Sherlock Holmes may be the most famous fictional character who ever existed and Doyle was the most popular writer since Dickens. But how could the man
January 04, 2012
New and Unimproved
Adaptation and reinvention run alongside the greatest artistic pursuits, and it has long been a skill of fine artists to steal for the purpose of maki
December 08, 2011
What is Jewish Literature?
Dan Miron, the foremost Israeli critic and scholar of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature, asks a big question: what is Jewish literature, or to be m
November 30, 2011
The Voyage In
Alexandra Harris says that “much of Virginia Woolf’s writing life was devoted to … exposing the falsity involved in defining anyone as ‘this’ or ‘that
October 19, 2011
The Grand Programme
A book on why to read another book is, you might think, redundant, especially when there are so many predecessors that illuminate Moby-Dick, and by no
September 27, 2011
Dailiness in Extremis
This book’s primary aim is to capture, in broad and impressionistic strokes, the experience of the European intellectual community in the period befor
August 17, 2011
The Interstitials
Robert Vanderlan offers an unromantic book about a magazine, a milieu, and a city. Henry Luce was no Eliot or Sartre. He was a man of sizable intellec
August 09, 2011
All About Eve
Ernest Beckett’s complicated, nebulous family promises more than a colorful cast of personalities. Ernest's family invites the author, Michael Holroyd
