Intellectual Curiosities and Provocations

December 2007

Reviewing the Review: December 2 2007

The New York Times Book Review's Holiday Books issue is 80 pages thick, packed with lists and organized by special gift-book categories: Art, Cooking, Travel. But there are only two works of fiction reviewed, amidst all this Christmas cheer, and poetry doesn't show up at all, so -- no hard feelings, but I'm not going to be spending much time with the New York Times Book Review today.

This article is part of the Reviewing the New York Times Book Review series. The next post in the series is Reviewing the Review: December 9 2007. The previous post in the series is Reviewing the Review: November 25 2007.

In Search of Beowulf

Classics,
Fantasy,
Film,
Poetry
I first discovered Beowulf when I was around ten years old. On rainy weekends, when my brother and I started to wreak too much havoc inside the house, my father would round us up and read us poetry. I’m not sure if he felt that poetry would have a calming effect on us, or if he was just trying to instill some culture, but poetry was his weapon of choice. He had gone to the University of Illinois on the GI Bill, and had studied English Literature. It wasn’t a very practical choice from a career perspective, but he did get some good books out of it.

Is He Dead?, a New Play by Mark Twain

American,
Comedy,
Drama,
Visual Art

Mark Twain is so well known for his successes that it's refreshing to learn that he wrote several mediocre plays, mostly commercial-minded light comedies, to help pay bills in his later years. Some of these plays were better than others, and it was only five years ago that Stanford University Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin discovered one diamond in the rough, a crazy send-up of the French art scene called Is He Dead? that Twain wrote in 1898 (it was almost produced, but the plans fell through).

Reviewing the Review: December 9 2007

Poetry,
Politics
The cover of this week's New York Times Book Review offers a guessing game: the "Ten Best Books of 2007" are photographed backwards, displaying only blank page-edge faces and slim slivers of jacket artwork to give their identities away. One can spot Denis Johnson and Joshua Ferris quickly, but the lone paperback original on the list -- Michael Thomas's Man Gone Down -- seems to get swallowed up in the stack.

This article is part of the Reviewing the New York Times Book Review series. The next post in the series is Rewinding the Review, December 9 2007: Sam Tanenhaus to Run Week In Review. The previous post in the series is Reviewing the Review: December 2 2007.

Rewinding the Review, December 9 2007: Sam Tanenhaus to Run Week In Review

News,
Politics
Quick update to today's Review of the New York Times Book Review: I've now heard the news that Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus will be adding the Sunday "Week In Review" section to his editorial duties, replacing Katy Roberts. I'm disappointed to hear this.

This article is part of the Reviewing the New York Times Book Review series. The next post in the series is Reviewing the Review: December 16 2007. The previous post in the series is Reviewing the Review: December 9 2007.

Jamelah Reads the Classics: To the Lighthouse

I've been having a hard time starting this post because I'm not really sure what to write about this book. Not because I didn't like it; on the contrary, I liked it quite a lot. Which is the problem. I liked it so much that I sort of feel that anything I write will be kind of pointless in comparison. But I'll try anyway. So. To the Lighthouse is about the Ramsay family (and assorted friends, acquaintances and guests) staying at a summer home in Scotland. Premise-wise, it doesn't sound very interesting, and on the surface, perhaps it isn't.

This article is part of the Jamelah Reads The Classics series. The next post in the series is Jamelah Reads the Classics: Ulysses, Part 1. The previous post in the series is Jamelah Reads the Classics: The Maltese Falcon.

Reviewing the Review: December 16 2007

News
I wrote last week, following the announcement that NYTBR editor-in-chief Sam Tanenhaus would be adding the Week In Review news/opinion section to his responsibilities, that this announcement seemed to signal Tanenhaus's eventual exit from direct responsibility for the New York Times Book Review.

This article is part of the Reviewing the New York Times Book Review series. The next post in the series is Reviewing the Review: January 6 2008. The previous post in the series is Rewinding the Review, December 9 2007: Sam Tanenhaus to Run Week In Review.