Monthly Archives: August 2015

Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina is a compelling read, a powerful look at life among working class Southerners, and what is known in the vernacular as a “hot mess” – a beautiful work in spite of its flaws…. One … Continue reading →

Tom Doyle’s excellent book on Paul McCartney during the Wings years reveals a Paul most don’t know very well: a conflicted, sometimes lost, boy/man trying to carry on as a musician while also trying to be husband/father and rock star/cultural agitator at … Continue reading →

We now have not even close to definitive proof that William Shakespeare smoked marijuana and perhaps used cocaine. Good thing Francis Bacon or Christopher Marlowe wrote those plays, huh…? Busy with a lot of stuff for school and behind a … Continue reading →

Murder and Bombs is the sort of thrill ride that any reader would be glad to add their collection of what we know fondly as “beach reads.”  Greg Stene’s latest crime novel, Murder and Bombs covers lots of ground despite … Continue reading →

V. L. Brunskill’s Waving Backwards is a bildungsroman with a twist; the heroine must find her way forward by finding her way backwards…. I wrote last week about Lee Smith’s excellent bildungsroman Black Mountain Breakdown. In that essay I defended Smith’s … Continue reading →

Black Mountain Breakdown is a fine novel with depths that many readers, whether they are those who prefer what is dismissed as “lifestyle lit” or those who would dismiss Smith’s work too easily as such, may not see thanks to their biases….. … Continue reading →

Salinger and Hemingway got be be friends in Hemingway’s favorite context for male bonding: war. What kinds of friends they were says something about each man…. Nicolaus Mills, a professor of American Studies at Sarah Lawrence College, is currently writing … Continue reading →

Go Set a Watchman, to use a tired description, is what it is: a sixty year old first novel that its author, with guidance from a thoughtful editor, revised into a beloved classic of American literature. I wrote about Harper … Continue reading →