The beginning of die Wende

Twenty years ago today the Berlin Wall, the concrete symbol of the Cold War, began to come down. Günter Schabowski, a member of the politbur...

Invisible

Paul Auster, Invisible (New York: Henry Holt, 2009). 308 pp. $25.00. Paul Auster has always been fascinated with the kinds of fiction that ...

Life of Stanley Elkin

Very good news out of Illinois. An uncorrected advance proof of Shouting Down the Silence: A Biography of Stanley Elkin by David C. Dougher...

Racial difference: the board game

Well, I was wrong. When I announced my turn to the Left three weeks ago, I was confident that never again would unstated views be attribute...

A good critic is hard to find

Over at Underbelly, Buce finds that Elsa Morante’s History: A Novel (1977), a “book about the rottenness of war,” does not really belong o...

The Elements of Style

Nearly every writer of my generation has been influenced by The Elements of Style , the Cornell philologist William Strunk’s “little book” r...

Five Books of happiness

A month ago, when I linked to the American Book Exchange’s list of the top ten depressing novels and added a few suggestions of my own, the...