Yesterday, as I was considering how to begin my review of The PowerBook, a friend spotted the book on my coffee table. “Jeanette Winterson!” she exclaimed. “She’s a great writer.” I agreed, and we got to talking, and we found that we had both been …
Reviewing a single novel by Murakami without discussing his other works is like trying to walk up a steep embankment of newly cut grass after a summer rain in bowling shoes. It’s difficult to keep from slipping. Plot details and character delineation from one tale …
I first encountered the novels of A.S. Byatt in a British Literature survey I took to fulfill a degree requirement in college. When the professor assigned Possession, Byatt’s 1990 Booker Prize winner, she did so with an apologia to the class for its bulk, but …
For the last month, I’ve been practicing the phrase, “I used to live in Boston,” but it still feels strange to say it. In two weeks, I’ll put all my stuff in a truck and head south to New York. I’m prepared, but after eight …
Frank Zingrone, a respected Canadian communications scholar, explores the paralyzing power of new communication technologies, while offering a way out of an age of computerized chaos in his most recent book, The Media Symplex: At the Edge of Meaning in the Age of Chaos. Zingrone, …
I’m on the lawn at the Veterans Home. Families wait, anticipating the routine in heaven — a wad of sparks, red-blue-white-yellow-blue-white-red, bop-bop-bop, and the shirr-rr of whistles. One little green beret, dead drunk, asks for part of my blanket. How can I refuse him as …
The Mah Jong Cafe was across the street from the Gulf. Even though it was late October, the sun was warm and the breeze sultry. The waves made little more than a lapping sound that was hard to hear through the passing traffic and the …
