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The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard by J. G. Ballard
A Man of Extinction: J.G. Ballard's Distinctive Cast of Mind
A review by Nicholas Fraser
For a long time, the spirit of pinched traditionalism pervaded postwar British culture. Writers such as Angus Wilson and C. P. Snow vied with one another to reproduce old-fashioned narratives, upholding the values of gentility via the tired means of drawing-room comedies or novels of manners. In the tabloid press, violence was freely described, but it remained localized, confined to gory particulars. Something must have appeared attractive about this culture of self-imposed restraint, but it was hard for writers to confront with any confidence the contemporary condition of the human race. ...
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
A review by Celia McGee
Princeton Architectural Press is about to release a book on Frida Kahlo that features a cache of purportedly rediscovered paintings, journals, and trinket-laced archival materials, which experts are denouncing as fake. The publication looks to do little for the reputation and life story of the complicated Mexican artist except to further cheapen them. But as a venture into the territory where fiction stalks fact, it handily illustrates the romanticized notions of history's celebrities that get cast back over time. Barbara Kingsolver provides a foil to this tendency with The Lacuna, all the ...
The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess (Public Square) by Andrei Codrescu
Reality's Restore Button
A review by John-Ivan Palmer
E ver want to run naked across a convention floor, pie-hit a bishop, or show up at a job interview in a firecracker hat, screaming poetry until security guards haul you away? Andrei Codrescu's The Posthuman Dada Guide may not be the literal how-to that the title implies, but it will definitely give you the historical and philosophical basis you need to justify a stunt to your cell mates while the authorities figure out what to do with you. The book's subtitle, Tzara & Lenin Play Chess, more accurately describes the book's central theme; it refers to an allegorical game, played in 1916 at...
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The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis
Lydia Davis works literary magic in miniature
A review by Erika Recordon
To savor or to gorge? It's a question that's been weighing heavy on Lydia Davis fans all month. Spanning 20 years and four volumes of short fiction, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis is here. There are 198 stories, an overwhelming number for any writer. But Davis is a woman of economy, and many of her pieces run only a page or two in length (some stop at a single sentence). So it's tempting to carry this book with its punchy orange cover everywhere you go. You can read one boiled-down narrative at a time all over town -- in the waiting room at a doctor's office, on the bus to work, in...
The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found by Mary Beard
A City Unbottled
A review by Joy Connolly
Visit the ruins of Pompeii today, stroll to the famous "Villa of the Mysteries," and you will discover a room of enigmatic frescoes gleaming in the dim light, their crimsons and golds seeming as rich and resplendent as if they were painted yesterday. In a sense, they were: the walls of the room were heavily and repeatedly retouched, waxed and varnished with petroleum when they were discovered a century ago. The frescoes are typical of Pompeii's charms, the way its many relics seem to testify to the constancy of human invention and encourage us to forget the passage of time. Stroll around the...
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow
Defying Gravity
A review by Erin Aubry Kaplan
Distinguished by poetic interior monologues, short but cinematic chapters and characters suggested rather than drawn, Durrow's novel is a welcome entry in the crucial but cliché-prone genre of American race narratives. Based on a real incident, it tells the story of Rachel, the pubescent daughter of Roger, a black GI, and a Danish woman, Nella, who meet at an overseas military base and eventually marry. The relationship is troubled from the start, and after the couple moves to the U.S. in the 1980s, things really fall apart. They split, and Nella struggles to find her footing in a strange...
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