Meet Humbert Polanski

I don’t want to wade into the controversy over filmmaker Roman Polanski’s arrest at the Zurich airport on Saturday for raping a 13-year-old...

The 1,000-page morality tale

. . . that advocates killing homosexual men . This is how a commentator on the question of overrated novels, taunting bravely from behind ...

A difficult fast

As they head into Yom Kippur, Jews wish one another a tsom kal , an “easy fast.” The wish may be contrary to God’s plans. The Jews fast on Y...

The form of modern degradation

A mere ten years after the United States government tried for the last time to censor obscene literature, Philip Roth published a novel tha...

Core terms

A local private school has asked me to help revise and standardize the English curriculum. By the time its students graduate and head off to...

Her scarlet letter

Francine Prose, Touch (New York: Harper Teen, 2009). 262 pp. $16.99. While other writers of her generation spill their talents in “genre-be...

Shana tovah

All together now. To the tune of “My Darling Clementine”: Dip the apple in the honey, Sing the brakha loud and clear: Shana tovah tikatevu ...

Irving Kristol, 1920–2009

Irving Kristol, founder and editor of Encounter and the Public Interest , former managing editor of Commentary , and author of Reflections ...

Overrated novels

Continuing the discussion that he broached in the comments section to a post here, Alex Jurek asks his readers to name the most overrated ...

Highbrow and lowbrow

Everybody knows that the terms and the distinction between them were introduced by Van Wyck Brooks, but what is not so widely appreciated is...

Genres and niche markets

In a comment to my summary of our recent symposium The Function of Book Blogging at the Present Time , Jeff Sypeck challenges my claim abo...

Betrayal

Q. : Why is it that, when I leave class aware of not having done justice to a literary text, I feel as if I have betrayed it? A. [via Patri...

Summing up

The Function of Book Blogging at the Present Time, 14 After nearly two weeks of reflection on book blogging by some of the best bloggers out...

One year after Ike

Photo by Guy Reynolds, Dallas Morning News One year ago, just after 2:00 in the morning, Hurricane Ike made landfall over Galveston with max...

Infinitely more interesting

Patrick Kurp, author of Anecdotal Evidence , majority leader of the party of book bloggers, and cohost of this symposium, wraps up his end ...

Blogging is still on the nipple

The Function of Book Blogging at the Present Time, 12 by James Marcus House of Mirth What are the non-electronic precursors of book blogging...

9/11 and the literary fallacy

In the spring of 1943, as the tide was beginning to turn against the Axis in the Second World War, Bernard DeVoto delivered a series of lect...

Calm and fit and even-keeled

Levi Stahl, author of Ivebeenreadinglately and an editor who works in publishing, considers book blogging as a form of exercise in the ele...

Blogging is a way of life

The Function of Book Blogging at the Present Time, 10 by Nigel Beale Nota Bene Books • What are the non-electronic precursors of book bloggi...

Less than God, excelling other creatures

The nature and condition of man, wherin he is lasse than god almightie, and excellinge nat withstanding all other creatures in erthe, is cal...