The literary shlimil

Illustrated by the Bard paperback cover of Pnin and starting with Lucky Jim , Mark Sarvas’s list at bookforum.com commends eight “literary...

The critic takes aim

The Jewish holiday of Shavuot starts this evening, which will keep me from recording more commonplaces but not from finishing Kamila Shamsi...

Making identity large

Like many others, I was disturbed by the comments of Sonia Sotomayor, the new Associate Justice-designate of the U.S. Supreme Court, in a s...

Life-changing books

The Guardian asked twenty-eight British writers to name the book that changed their life. Given my new-found admiration for her, I was bad...

Firearms, expandable batons, flick knives

Elberry is planning his first visit to America, and has listed Houston as one of his destinations. He wants to see my “arsenal of firearms,...

The Hair of Harold Roux

When Robert Stone’s bring-the-war-home novel Dog Soldiers was awarded half a National Book Award in 1975, the New York Times reported that...

The party of no

Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal has written a sprightly review of the historian Edmund Morgan’s new book of essays, American Hero...

On plagiarism

The meaning of plagiarism has been narrowed to a quasi-legal charge. “A false accusation of plagiarism,” you will be informed, if you used t...

The hat trick

If Mookse and the Gripes’ review of her Orange Prize-shortlisted Burnt Shadows is accurate, Kamila Shamsie scores the hat trick with an im...

Grading

Reading books and reflecting on them have been slowed by the onerous professional duty of grading. Aside from the hopeless boredom of poring...

Prophet of nature’s loss

John Pipkin, Woodsburner (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2009). 367 pp. $28.95. When I was younger and vulnerable to enthusiasm, I reve...

Critics’ pay

Roger K. Miller reconsiders Sloan Wilson’s Man in the Gray Flannel Suit , comparing it favorably to Revolutionary Road . He also challenges...

How to pick a Nobel winner

Over at the A Pair of Ragged Claws, the Australian Literary Review blog hosted by the Sydney Australian , Stephen Romei asks whether Peter...

On irony and narrative disinterest

I continue to marvel at the difference between Ron Slate’s reading of Zoë Heller’s novel The Believers and my own. To repeat, while I hold...

Pocho

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, I want to take a look at Pocho by José Antonio Villarreal, perhaps the earliest Mexican-American novel—it was pu...

Orange Prize short list

The Orange Prize short list has been announced , and once again Marilynne Robinson’s Home is a finalist. It is the only title on the list t...

The Believers

Zoë Heller, The Believers (New York: Harper, 2009). $25.99. 335 pp. The shoving match between Jewish socialists and Jewish religionists ma...