Archive

I wrote reviews of the six top Booker contestants and paired them with six classic novels

A comparison of my Booker Prize favorite, Douglas Stuart’s "John of John" to E.M. Forster’s "The Longest Journey" shows its worthiness

To love Marlon James’s exuberantly queer voice is the start of a lifelong romance

Rebecca Perry and John Updike share memories of reviled administrations

The familiar is a tease. Luke Kennard stands on the shoulders of a young Fyodor Dostoevsky.

To many in Gen Z, "The Things We Never Say" is unforgivably centrist. I found it politically audacious, but as art it’s not exactly "Middlemarch".

Plus: Why M. John Harrison’s shortlisted novel reminded me of Douglas Adams

The origin story of Septimus Carr, an introduction for an emerging essay collection

Hernan Diaz and Barbara Kingsolver, who shared the 2023 Pulitzer Prize, are back this week with new novels.

Hernan Diaz and Barbara Kingsolver, who shared the 2023 Pulitzer Prize, are back in the ring this week with new novels. NEXT WEEK, Septimus Carr will provide the play-by-play.

What I have in common with Haruki Murakami, or Lessons from "Abandoning a Cat"

A concurrent reading of "Cranford" and "Scenes of Clerical Life"

Michelle de Kretser Looks for New Forms But Elif Batuman Has Already Been There

A Supplement to "Ishiguro & Murakami Float Ideas on the River of Metaphor"

Analyzing "An Artist of the Floating of the Floating World" on Haruki Murakami's Terms and "Killing Commendatore" on Kazuo Ishiguro's Terms

Confidence as America’s Chief Export in Henry James and Barbara Kingsolver

How Jan Swafford’s Brahms Biography Turned Around My World in 80 Days

An Open Letter to David Frum in Reply to His Botched "Romola" Review

The Memoirs of Two Folk Rock Giants Recast Their Public Façades

The Man Who Gave a Name to a Theater - and Me

What I Learned from the Trifurcated Tragic Ending of Vincenzo Bellini, Gioachino Rossini, and playwright Terrence McNally

What Nick Hornby and Michael Frayn Taught Me About the Artistic Life

Alexander Chee’s "The Queen of the Night" Channels the Grand Silliness of Opera

"God Help the Child" as Unofficial Sequel to "The Bluest Eye"

or, Has Timothée Chalamet Even Heard of the Verse Novel?

"The Fortune of the Rougons" may not be science, but it triumphs as political satire

Grappling with irreconcilable tensions between "Emperor and Galilean"

Haruki Murakami at the Height of His Powers

Re-evaluating the Moral Compass of John Jeremiah Sullivan's "Pulphead"

Edward Dolnick's "The Clockwork Universe" Is Three Good Books with Four Bad Titles

Scale problems in a study of 1816 by a historian father and his meteorologist son

Does Gabriela Cabezón Cámara Let a Transgender Colonialist Off the Hook?

Self-Revelation in the "Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov"

Edition Anxiety and Haruki Murakami's "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World"

Revisiting Terrence McNally's Script for "The Lisbon Traviata"

A.S. Byatt Dramatizes the Tantalizing Drudgery of Research

"What We Can Know" Is a Damning Tell-all Biography of Our Reckless Generation

Literary Genius or Snake Oil Salesman?

The Impossibility of Connection in "The Voyage Out"