Intellectual Curiosities and Provocations

March 2008

Reviewing the Review: March 2 2008

Once again, the New York Times Book Review features writing about topical politics on the cover, and once again the critical sensibility is not distinctive or literary enough for this platform.

This article is part of the Reviewing the New York Times Book Review series. The next post in the series is Reviewing the Review: March 9 2008. The previous post in the series is Reviewing the Review: February 24 2008.


Fortune Cookie Chronicles: What Happened To General Tso?



I was on a train last year reading a review copy of Boomsday by Christopher Buckley, which was not yet out in stores. The guy next to me noticed it, and told me "My friend's book is coming out from the same publisher next year." His friend turned out to be Jennifer 8. Lee, whose amusing name I'd occasionally noticed in New York Times bylines. Her first book was going to be about the history of Chinese food in America.

Of Broccoli and Books

When I was a kid, I was a notoriously fussy eater. I did not like foods that were too green, foods that were mushy, foods that looked weird, foods that smelled weird. I’m not entirely sure if I had a method for deciding which foods were unacceptable, but I do know that, among other things, it meant I did not like pickles or onions, lettuce or tomatoes, raisins or bananas. I was wary of avocadoes and I outright didn’t trust mushrooms.

Reviewing the Review: March 9 2008

Let's cast a wider net today. We can start with Barack Obama's foreign policy advisor (and sometime New York Times Book Review contributor) Samantha Power, who has been canned and publicly roasted for some excessive comments about Hillary Clinton. These comments were a mistake, but an apology should have sufficed.

This article is part of the Reviewing the New York Times Book Review series. The next post in the series is Reviewing the Review: March 16 2008. The previous post in the series is Reviewing the Review: March 2 2008.


Just Books

For almost three years now, I have sporadically been reading classic works (or at least really old works) of literature and reporting on them here at LitKicks for the Jamelah Reads the Classics series. So far, I've read and reported on several books. (At present, I'm still quasi-working on James Joyce's Ulysses. Maybe I'll be done with that by June.)

Reviewing the Review: March 16 2008

This has nothing to do with anything, but Richard Price's face cracks me up. You can see this weary visage on the cover of today's New York Times Book Review (which has recently begun running edgy, artistic author photos on its cover, a refreshing change from the usual diagrammatic illustrations).

This article is part of the Reviewing the New York Times Book Review series. The next post in the series is Reviewing the Review: March 23 2008. The previous post in the series is Reviewing the Review: March 9 2008.


Capitaine Achab

 
Capitaine Achab
 

French film maker Philippe Ramos has recently released a film titled Capitaine Achab (Captain Ahab). It's the story of Herman Melville's obsessed sea captain, from the time he was a young boy until his last, fatal meeting with Moby Dick.

French film maker Philippe Ramos has recently released a film titled Capitaine Achab (Captain Ahab). It's the story of Herman Melville's obsessed sea captain, from the time he was a young boy until his last, fatal meeting with Moby Dick. The film won the FIPRESCI prize at the 60th annual Locarno (Switzerland) film festival. FIPRESCI is the Federation Internationale de la Presse Cinematographique or International Federation of Film Critics.

Ramos' idea is interesting: imagine -- and fill in the gaps of -- Ahab’s life, which was sketched but not drawn in detail by Melville in Moby Dick. Ramos presents Ahab’s story in a series of vignettes. In presenting the tale in this fashion, the film maker deviates from the style of Melville's classic novel, which is packed with details on everything from whaling techniques to a psychological study of the interplay between Pip the cabin boy and Ahab. Instead, Ramos gives us five miniatures of Ahab's life, almost like five Vermeer oils, visually arresting and providing just enough detail to get a sense of Ahab's development.

Reviewing the Review: March 23 2008

David Kamp, considering Sarah Boxer's Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web in this weekend's New York Times Book Review, wisely zeroes in on the same problem I have with this book. Noting that Boxer says an editor gave her the idea for this book and that she originally considered it a dreadful idea, he finds the book "too preoccupied with being respectably booky rather than wildly bloggy" and discovers "a nose-holding quality to her introduction". He asks:

This article is part of the Reviewing the New York Times Book Review series. The next post in the series is Releasing the Review: March 30 2008. The previous post in the series is Reviewing the Review: March 16 2008.


Releasing the Review: March 30 2008

I'm taking a break from the Review Review today. I've gotten some feedback that I've been phoning it in lately, and I guess I have to agree. A week's reprieve should help me locate my lost sense of purpose.

But I'll be back for the first issue of April next weekend, and I'm sure I'll be my usual pithy self again by then. Meanwhile, check out the NYTBR's Paper Cuts blog, which really has gotten livelier since they've opened it up to more writers. Good stuff.

This article is part of the Reviewing the New York Times Book Review series. The next post in the series is Reviewing the Review: April 6 2008. The previous post in the series is Reviewing the Review: March 23 2008.