Surprisingly, it is Ben Stiller, who so wanted Hoffman and Streisand in the film, who does not convey enough love for his parents—and that is because he does not convey enough feeling of any kind in the film. I found…
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A review of Schultze Gets the Blues
Schultze Gets the Blues arrives on these shores virtually unannounced; and so the pleasure one gets from it is unexpected and one is quietly grateful. Its comedy is born of the quotidian details of life, eccentric personality, sudden surges of genuine feeling, friendship, bemusement, unfamiliarity with strange customs, and the dramatized observation that sometimes things do fall well into place.
A review of Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? by Jacob Golomb and Robert S. Wistrich, eds.
The editors say that Nietzsche’s philosophy cannot be simplified, but that has happened periodically; and his work has been utilized by both conservatives and radicals. (It may be an irony that so accessible a writer requires interpreters.) Nietzsche’s high regard…
A review of Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics, and Culture by Vron Ware and Les Back
The commentary in the book is consistently intelligent and informed, featuring wide-ranging references, historical and current, and the tone of the book is austere; but this project seems drenched in a self-conscious piety, a dull redundancy of fact, and oddly…
A review of The Little Prince (audio) by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
This latest audio version, read in a lucid and calm BBC voice by actor John Gaden, is beautifully set out, with exquisite and carefully chosen classical music between each chapter. The music is played by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and…
A review of City of Glass by Paul Auster
There is a play on names that runs through this book like a fugue. The putative writer of the book Paul Auster will prove to be another, a writer whose name is not given. Peter is the name of Quinn’s…
A review of W, or the Memories of Childhood by Georges Perec
This is a book of complexities and difficult issues. It finds an imaginative path into the abyss of man’s failure to be human. It is therefore a horror story, but one with unflinching honesty and an ability to extract poetry…
A review of Things: A Story of the Sixties and A Man Asleep by Georges Perec
With merciless persistence Perec pursues the crowd of shallow young men and women with their dissatisfactions which they mistake for pleasures and with their greatest goals both paltry and foolish. They have a need for one another but no loyalty,…
A review of A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene
The prose has a deliberate hard-boiled rhythm (the novel’s opening sentences – “Murder didn’t mean much to Raven. It was just a new job. You had to be careful…” – illustrates this as well as anything) and the suspense is…
A review of You Are Going Away edited by Matthew Ward
Most of the stories, and particularly the three winners, have all of those qualities: are tightly structured with a conflict that pulls the reader in and drives the narrative forward, leading carefully and conclusively towards the ending. Interestingly, a large…