Knopf Review by Walter Cummins It may be me, but I find the three stories of Russell Banks’ posthumous American Spirits collection to be examples of gallows humor despite the…
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Last Acts by Alexander Sammartino
Scribner Review by George Yatchisin If fathers and sons didn’t exist, novelists would have had to invent them. Alexander Sammartino, in his debut novel Last Acts, dishes up quite a…
3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool by James Kaplan
Penguin Review by Walter Cummins Despite the depiction of the many triumphs of three of the greatest jazz musicians—many might argue of musicians in any genre—3 Shades of Blue is…
The Freaks Came Out To Write : The Definitive History of The Village Voice, The Radical Paper That Changed American Culture by Tricia Romano
Public Affairs Walter Cummins In my long-ago youth I was one of the thousands of young poseurs, the wannabes from the outlying regions like New Jersey, who descended on Greenwich…
Two Perspectives on Thomas Mann and his Translator: Mrs. Lowe-Porter by Jo Salas and The Magician by Colm Tóbín
Jackleg | Scribner Essay by Jinny Webber Thomas Mann, Nobel Prize-winner for literature in 1929, is the magician of Colm Tóbín’s novel. In his review in this journal, David Starkey…
Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life by John Gray
Picador Review by Walter Cummins As I read John Gray’s Feline Philosophy, I couldn’t help thinking of the concluding lines of Archibald McLeish’s “Ars Poetica”—“A poem should not mean / But…
Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House by Katerina Stoykova
Kentucky Review by H. L. Hix Immigration is a pressing public policy issue. Millions worldwide are fleeing conditions of grave danger or extreme hardship in one country for conditions they…
Erasure and American Fiction: Percival Everett in Fiction and Film
Graywolf Press | Orion Pictures Essay by Walter Cummins Is if fair to compare a book and its movie version? A friend who was a Hollywood writer argues that they…
God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning by Meghan O’Gieblyn
Doubleday Review by Walter Cummins Meghan O’Gieblyn opens and closes God, Human, Animal, Machine with detailed descriptions of her meaningful relationships with beings—in effect, machines— that were the creations of…