- Books: “The Enchanter.”
Zanganeh writes a love letter to literature and to Vladimir Nabokov, a writer who has charmed her with his “demonic artistry of words” and with the “joyousness of pure knowledge.” Zanganeh, once a reluctant reader, picks up “Ada, or Ardor” and quickly discovers that . . . (Subscription required.)...
- George Packer: The Presidential memoirs of George W. Bush.
President George W. Bush prepared for writing his memoirs by reading “Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant.” “The book captures his distinctive voice,” the ex-President writes, in his less distinctive voice. “He uses anecdotes to re-create his experience during the Civil War. I . . ....
- Books: “Verdi’s Shakespeare” review.
In the essays collected here, Wills examines how Verdi—who, though he did not read English, “adored Shakespeare”—composed and staged “Macbeth,” “Otello,” and “Falstaff,” all “solid masterpieces,” and the latter two “arguably the greatest things he . . . (Subscription required.)...
- David Denby: “Source Code” and “Meek’s Cutoff.”
8220;Source Code,” a techno-thriller about a dead man who tries to save Chicago from nuclear destruction, is much more enjoyable than “Inception,” “The Adjustment Bureau,” “Limitless,” and other fantastical jaunts of recent seasons. The movie may begin as a sci-fi . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “Walks with Men.”
Beattie’s novella is set in the Manhattan of literary aspirants’ dreams: a recent Harvard graduate, Jane, takes up with Neil, a man twenty-three years her senior, who provides an education in food, clothing, and sex. “You’re smart,” he says, “but you . . ....
- Anthony Lane: “Robin Hood.”
What do you get if you mix “Gladiator,” “The Return of Martin Guerre,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Elizabeth,” “Troy,” “The Seventh Seal,” and a hundred buckets of mud? The answer is “Robin Hood”—the latest version . . ....
- Books: “Three Stages of Amazement.”
Edgarian’s second novel follows an idealistic couple who want their marriage to be “a flexible, romantic sort of agreement” but find that it has become “a mousetrap.” Lena used to be a “nail-the-bastards” radio producer; now she cares for two . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “Three Stages of Amazement.”
Edgarian’s second novel follows an idealistic couple who want their marriage to be “a flexible, romantic sort of agreement” but find that it has become “a mousetrap.” Lena used to be a “nail-the-bastards” radio producer; now she cares for two . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “The Thieves of Manhattan.”
Crime caper meets metafictional satire of the publishing industry in this mischievous novel. Ian Minot, a hard-up writer from Indiana, moonlights as a barista in Manhattan while he watches “raptors and poseurs” rocket to fame on implausible memoirs and derivative stories. When an editor suggests passing off . . ....
- Books: “Young Romantics.”
Hay examines the “turbulent communal existence” of the English Romantic poets, astutely parsing the intricate circumstances that led to this network’s distinctive creative output; she shows, for instance, that “Frankenstein” emerged not merely out of fireside “conversations about ghosts and galvanism” but . . ....
- Books: Victor Cha’s “The Impossible State” review.
8220;Industrialized,” “urbanized,” and “high tech” are not words one typically associates with North Korea. Yet, in the wake of the Second World War, as China and the U.S.S.R. vied for influence in the Korean peninsula, it was just that. Since then, political paranoia, economic . . . (Subscription required.)...
- John Lahr: “Seminar” and “Private Lives” reviews.
Alan Rickman is the go-to actor for supercilious. Over the years, in screen roles as various as the Sheriff of Nottingham in “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” Colonel Brandon in “Sense and Sensibility,” Hans Gruber in “Die Hard,” and Severus Snape in the . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Goings on About Town: Readings and Talks
goatTitle-->BOOKCOURT
Mark Kurlansky, the author of “Cod,” “Salt,” and “The Big Oyster,” among many other books, discusses his latest release, “World Without Fish,” an illustrated assessment of the future of the oceans. (163 Court St., Brooklyn. 718-875-3677. April 20 at . . ....
- Books: “James Madison.”
One of only two delegates to attend every session of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Madison transcribed the deliberations. He decided to publish this “most exact account” posthumously, reasoning that “the distance of time like that of space” lends to everything an “attractive” lustre. In . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “Feeding on Dreams” review.
This latest memoir by the Chilean-American author and former Allende adviser resumes the tale of his countless “dislocations” since fleeing Chile, in 1973. Dorfman shuttles among three continents and two languages, adrift in “an eternal victimhood of regret.” The resulting “wrath” may help . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “A Reader on Reading.”
Lectures, columns, and other occasional writings are gathered here to form a meditation on “the art of reading.” Thoughtful interrogations of the value of identity labels like “Jewish fiction” or “gay fiction” and the relationship between writers and editors mix with ruminations on the . . ....
- Books: “Blood’s a Rover”
The final novel of Ellroy’s “Underworld U.S.A.” trilogy, following “American Tabloid” and “The Cold Six Thousand,” is a fittingly crazed and violent account of the years 1968 to 1972. Alternating chapters follow three henchmen with ties to a labyrinth of interconnected schemes . . ....
- Goings on About Town: Above and Beyond
goatTitle-->“SHUFFLE CULTURE”
The Roots founder and “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” bandleader Ahmir (Questlove) Thompson presents an eclectic evening of music and performance meditating on the relationship between music and technology. “Shuffle Culture” is a randomized but clever ninety-minute “real . . ....
- Anthony Lane: The long, strange history of 3-D.
Did you enjoy “Rottweiler”? How about “Bwana Devil” or “Black Lolita”? Maybe you preferred “International Stewardesses,” although you might know it under the more thoughtful title of “Supersonic Supergirls.” You will not need reminding that these are among the crowning . . ....
- Anthony Lane: “Nine,” “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus,” “The Young Victoria,” and “A Single Man.”
The beginning of “Nine” feels like an end. The first words we hear are “You kill your film,” uttered at a press conference by an Italian movie director named Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis). We then find him at the Cinecittà film studios, in Rome . . ....
- Anthony Lane: “Damsels in Distress,” “We Have a Pope” reviews.
Never a man in a hurry, Whit Stillman has waited fourteen years since “The Last Days of Disco” to deliver a fresh film. After such a gestation, we expect something dense and hefty, like “The Tree of Life,” but “Damsels in Distress”—Stillman . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim.”
Abandoned by his wife and rebuffed by his estranged father, a middle-aged salesman named Maxwell Sim—“like a SIM card”—finds he has “lost all appetite” for “human contact.” Leaving behind seventy Facebook friends and the fake e-mail address he . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “William Golding.”
Carey’s thorough and illuminating biography, the first of Golding, also serves as a crucial introduction to the Nobel Prize-winning novelist’s output. Golding’s novels, which include “The Inheritors,” “Pincher Martin,” and “Darkness Visible,” have always stood in the . . ....
- David Denby: “True Grit,” “The Company Men,” “Somewhere,” and “The Tempest.”
In “True Grit,” the Coen brothers’ enjoyably astringent remake of the maudlin John Wayne Western from 1969, the characters all speak in formal diction. They abjure contractions (typical sentence: “He has abandoned me to a congress of louts”), and they avoid the fanciful, “fuck . . . (Subscription required.)...
- David Denby: “True Grit,” “The Company Men,” “Somewhere,” and “The Tempest.”
In “True Grit,” the Coen brothers’ enjoyably astringent remake of the maudlin John Wayne Western from 1969, the characters all speak in formal diction. They abjure contractions (typical sentence: “He has abandoned me to a congress of louts”), and they avoid the fanciful, “fuck . . . (Subscription required.)...
- David Denby: “This Is Not a Film,” “Wanderlust,” “Safe House” reviews.
Jafar Panahi is a fifty-one-year-old Iranian film director with a restlessly intense manner and a sturdy, undefeatable sense of the absurd. A maker of nonpolitical films (“The White Balloon,” “The Circle”), Panahi has nevertheless been sentenced by the Iranian authorities to six years . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi: “Gilgul.”
8220;You know,” she said almost shyly, “that I have the ability, if you wish, to look into your eyes and tell you when you will die?”
“No, I didn’t realize you could do that.” He hesitated for a moment. “And I . . . (Subscription required.)...
- George Saunders: “Escape from Spiderhead.”
8220;Drip on?” Abnesti said over the P.A.
“What’s in it?” I said.
“Hilarious,” he said.
“Acknowledge,” I said.
Abnesti used his remote. My MobiPak™ whirred. Soon the Interior Garden looked really nice. Everything seemed super-clear.
I said out . . ....
