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A review of Ignorance by Milan Kundera

When Ignorance is good, the novel flows like an insightful and moving non-fiction essay along the lines of Garner’s work. The reader perceives Kundera’s insight and shares in the attempts at returning home. There are also moments of sad beauty…

A review of Nosferatu by by Dana Gioia

The poetic needs of a libretto can be reduced to very few. The words assist the music and are absorbed into it. Music must bolster up the more pedestrian passages but needs effective words to support dramatic action and vivid…

A review of Love by Toni Morrison

The truth of these characters is something both suppressed and created by the man who has damaged them. Cosey’s influence, his power, is one which sits at the opposing pole to the power demonstrated, especially in the end, by Christine…

A review of The Body’s Question: Poems by Tracy K. Smith

Her poems are unpretentious, intelligent and consistently arresting by their beauty and their honesty. This is another triumph for Graywolf Press which seems unable to publish any but distinguished books. Reviewed by Bob Williams The Body’s Question by Tracy K.…

Interview with Wells Earl Draughon

The author of Advanced Writing talks about the making of his book, the limitations of other books for writers, his first book for writers, the importance of the reader, the underlying similarities between fiction and screen plays, the nature of the film world, the “NY Editor” and NYer in general (!), his views about literary fiction and value labels, his next book, and lots more.

A review of Advanced Writing by Wells Earl Draughon

Throughout Advanced Writing, author Wells Earl Draughon is careful to define his terms, and uses his close analysis of words normally used to designate the tools of fiction – things like dynamics, consummation scenes, character appeal, architecture, and setting as…

A review of Elizabeth Costello by J M Coetzee

Pointless is, unfortunately, the best adjective for this book. There is no coherence between any of the chapters, we have no feeling for any of Costello’s work, and none of the characters, including Costello, are developed. The potential theme, which…

A review of Middlesex by Jeffrey Euginedes

Middlesex the novel is presented as Cal’s third birth – his artistic creation of the “roller coaster ride of a single gene through time.” Cal’s voice is the heart of the story, which is told in a kind of first…