Sex, drugs and a guitar or two abound in “The Fun Parts,” Sam Lipsyte’s most recent collection of character-focused vignettes. Unfortunately for Lipsyte, what results is a hit-and-miss read with a few real gems and far too many forced laughs. Read More…
What is the meaning of freedom? Angela Davis has devoted her life to the exploration of this question and to combating all forms of oppression that deny people their freedom based on race, gender, class or sexual orientation. Read More…
Now, according to the former editor of “Wired,” Chris Anderson, there is a third revolution that is a combination of those that preceded it. It is the “Maker Movement,” and Anderson is just the guy to tell you about it. Read More…
The single girl is in perpetual existential crisis. She is faced with a glut of choices, some of them formative, others as simple as whom to date, and none of them easy. She is a paradox: A simultaneous blend of autonomy and dependence, of indecision and resolution. Her desire floats Read More…
Stuart Nadler’s new novel “Wise Men” is not easily digestible, though its prose is not difficult. The themes it explores — from race, to lust, to the corruptive power of wealth — are so large and multifaceted as to render this one doozy of a seaside saga. Maybe it’s best Read More…
For all the recent institutional attention to graffiti, its natural habitat remains the grimy-glorious concrete jungle. “Rage is Back,” a new novel by Berkeley-based Adam Mansbach, author of children’s-book-turned-viral-sensation “Go the Fuck to Sleep,” knows it: “Don’t ever mention Haring to a graffiti writer by the way, or Basquiat either. Read More…
In his new book, T Cooper recounts an interview with a journalist about one of his previous works. After an interview in which the journalist was overly interested in his life (even off the record), Cooper read the published story and was dismayed to see that the majority of the Read More…
The Brothers Grimm have always seemed to be a fictional pair themselves — they are known for their collection of witches, princesses and elves, and never insert their opinions or morals into their tales. But Philip Pullman presents the two as “serious-minded” intellectuals in the introduction of “Fairy Tales from Read More…
Summing up an entire lifetime in a book seems either impossible or depressing. We hope that our lives cannot be compressed into a single volume. With her new collection of stories, “Dear Life,” Alice Munro attempts to do this, but she ultimately fails in offering more than flat emotion and Read More…
In New York City, sometime in the early hours of October 30, a car made its way uptown. The streets were unusually empty for that hour (or any hour in NYC). A hurricane was in town and instead of the benign ambivalence with which the city usually greets new arrivals, Read More…