Leela James: and her complex aims, one of the beautiful dames, besieged by seductive games, knowing predictability maims, talent names, success tames.… A Change Is Gonna Come has a rich, warm sound—vintage. Within its exploration of love, there’s another interlude, “Married,” in…
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Impaled on Beauty. A review of The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld
While The Man of My Dreams is set up as a coming-of-age novel, Hannah’s growth is primarily physical rather than emotional. Although it is a rather unsatisfying read in that sense, there are many aspects to this capable narrative which make it…
A Musician Who Lays Claim to the World: Caetano Veloso’s “Foreign Sound” and his “Best”
One hears the plucking of guitar strings and orchestral swirls, and Caetano Veloso’s voice is both light and grave. It’s fun to hear him sing Cobain’s “Come As You Are,” which was first recorded by the band Nirvana, and contains sharp contradictions, suggesting not confusion but an aware and complex mind. Veloso uses both a falsetto voice and a low, declamatory voice to interpret “Feelings,” making a song that had become a cabaret cliché sound like a genuine human expression.
A review of The Essential Barbra Streisand and Guilty Pleasures
When not practical, and even practicality has its deceptions, many people think in clichés, and even feel in clichés, and at their most rigorous they simply use one cliché to interrogate another, but in every generation, in every age, there are a few original people—and Streisand is original; and she often, if not always, has been fearless in art and politics.
The Cultural Politics Discussion Group: Gestures Toward an American Utopia (featuring Experiments in Criticism)
This article commemorates the Cultural Politics Discussion Group (1989-1993) and offers comment on literature and literary criticism, Pirandello, John Stuart Mill, and also articulates questions about feminism and Jewish modernity.
A review of Salt and Dreaming Wide Awake by Lizz Wright
“My eyes burn, I have seen the glory of a brighter sun,” Wright sings in “Dreaming Wide Awake,” with its limpid beginning. Lizz Wright sings, “Who are you, stranger, to come here, and answer all my prayers?” and one might ask the same thing of her: and I imagine she may spend her entire career answering the question. It is something to look forward to.
Review of A Little Moonlight by Dianne Reeves
The album, A Little Moonlight, by Dianne Reeves is tasteful, intelligent, and pleasing; it is a collection of well-known songs, including “What A Little Moonlight Can Do,” “Darn That Dream,” “You Go To My Head,” “We’ll Be Together Again,” and “Skylark,” but it is impossible not to hear it, at least partly, as a gesture of nostalgia.
A review of Native Sons by James Baldwin and Sol Stein
Stein talks about Baldwin being late in delivering his work and the editorial process they shared; and it’s hard not to hear in these words Stein’s self-aggrandizement. Especially as Native Sons is an unnecessary book: Baldwin is one of the rare writers who told us what we need to know about himself, his philosophy, and his work. While this book Native Sons is not despicable, one wonders why it was published.
Gallows Songs by Christian Morgenstern and Selected Translations by W.E. Snodgrass
These are a splendid pair of books from a gifted writer who turns his hand to every possibility with the liveliness of fearless and abundant talent. For readers ready to expand their horizons, these are essential additions to their collections.…
A review of Theft by Peter Carey
Although the truth theme continues to be compelling, it never takes precedence to the original and natural integrity of the story, which is overwhelmingly entertaining, first and foremost. On pure plot and characterisation alone, Carey is a master. That Theft like all…