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Thomas Wolfe and Maxwell Perkins, Honored Guests at This Year’s Book Sale
My friend, the editor, has likened his own function at this painful time to that of a man who is trying to hang onto the fin of a plunging whale.…
Thomas Pynchon With the Wind in His Sails: In “Bleeding Edge” New York Is “The Real Story”
Thirty chapters into Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, Bleeding Edge (Penguin $28.95 ), the familiar voice that has been riffing on “ghost stops on abandoned subway lines” and girls “whose fashion…
“Strangest of All Strange Companions” — D.H. Lawrence and September 11
David Herbert Lawrence was born on this day, September 11, 1885, in the mining town of Eastwood, near Nottingham. He died March 2, 1930, some seven decades before the terrorist…
Remembering Julie Harris, Elia Kazan’s Angel and James Dean’s Guiding Light
I doubt that Jimmy would ever have got through East of Eden (1955) except for an angel on our set. Her name was Julie Harris and she was goodness itself…
On the Money: Front Page Fun With Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Kelly Clarkson
What’s not to like when two giants of English literature are making news in the 21st century? What’s not to like about seeing a portion of Shakespeare’s handwriting on the…
“The Paris Wife” Meets “The Killers”: In Hemingway Six Words Are Worth a Thousand Pictures
“Ever go to the movies?” “Once in a while.” “You ought to go to the movies more. The movies are fine for a bright boy like you.” —from Ernest Hemingway’s “The…
Celebrating Vivekananda’s American Adventure on His 150th Birthday
If you want to know India, study Vivekananda. —Rabindranath Tagore to Romain Rolland The song really came from Swami Vivekananda, who said, ‘If there is a God, we must see…
Live From Detroit: Standing in the Shadows Searching for a Silver Lining
Everything good about Detroit is available on iTunes. —post on New York Times blog “When the nation catches a cold, Detroit gets pneumonia,” people would say during the Depression, with…
Before Sunrise to Sunset to Midnight — The Chemistry of Connection
I knew, the first time I saw Before Sunrise, that here was a film for which I felt not only interest or admiration but love; a film I would want…
Sleeping on Hallowed Ground: A Gettysburg Seance With Stephen Crane
She was at last looking upon those curious beings who rode down from the North — those men of legend and colossal tale — they who were possessed of such…
