Harry Mulisch translated by Paul Vincent Viking ($24.95) by Jason Picone Many contemporary novelists attempt to inform their fiction with science and philosophy, but few succeed as completely as the Dutch novelist Harry Mulisch. Without ever being heavy-handed or smart-alecky, his new novel manages to integrate chemistry, Jewish mysticism, and the Pygmalion myth in a […]
Jenny McPhee Doubleday ($22.95) by Rumaan Alam Who's more suited to a life of movie stardom than the children of movie stars? Reared in the glow of public affection and flash bulbs, they're poised from birth to parlay their unique luster, whether culturally endowed or genetically inherited, into a career on screen. Thus Anjelica Huston […]
Laird Hunt Coffee House Press ($23.95) by Kelly Everding In an essay on Robbe-Grillet's fiction, Roland Barthes writes: "'The human condition,' Heidegger has said, ‘is to be there.' Robbe-Grillet himself has quoted this remark apropos of Waiting for Godot, and it applies no less to his own objects, of which the chief condition, too, is […]
Barry Hannah Atlantic Monthly Press ($24) by Brian Beatty What an earnest fool I used to be. During my undergraduate and graduate school days, as I presumed to be studying the art and the craft of creative writing, I somehow convinced myself there was just one way to write serious literary fiction: the crazed way […]
by Robert Baker Growing directly out of the complex music of Gerrit Lansing's poetry is a metaphysical doctrine of considerable sophistication. But unlike many systems, Lansing's demands the full participation of the world-creating power of the imagination. Lansing's belief in the ultimate power of the imagination, however, raises some interesting questions regarding the status of […]
by Aaron Kunin Most things that are strange are actually strange in a fairly predictable way—e.g., "You're different from me, but I understand you completely; I know exactly what you're going to say." Jalal Toufic, who is, in his own description, "a writer, film theorist, and video artist," writes books that really are different from […]