The Dying Animal book by Philip Roth
Peter Ibbetson
While the title creature of Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal is drawn from a Yeats poem, a gimlet-eyed reader might attribute the reference to the dead horse that Roth continues…
July 2013
Stranger Shores book by J.M. Coetzee
At sixty-one years of age, the South African novelist J.M. Coetzee has crafted several treasures of contemporary fiction, including his most recent novel, Disgrace. The only author ever to win…
Political Fictions book by Joan Didion
Something about Joan Didion’s writing makes me almost believe every word. She’s so acridly disarming, so apparently prescient in her observations on American political life that I found myself doubting…
The Glass Palace book by Amitav Ghosh
Amitav Ghosh occupies a rather curious place in the landscape of contemporary English-language authors from the Indian subcontinent. At fifty-five years of age, he can’t be classed with the younger…
Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White book by Frank H. Wu
It is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day at Yale. I am attending one of the accompanying lectures when a graduate student comes up to me, an Asian American, and asks…
Monograph: We Built This Suburb by Carey Seal
Everyone agrees that America’s cities are in trouble. The familiar complaints about “urban blight” and overcrowded slums now seem almost quaint compared to the actual problem of wholesale desertion: the…
The Early Stories: 1953-1975 book by John Updike reviewed by Charlotte Dewar
Looking Backward A compendium of the early work of an American literary master In his 1986 introduction to a set of Paris Review interviews, John Updike quoted Philip Roth: “What…
Party of the People book by Jules Whitcover Grand Old Party book by Lewis L. Gould reviewed by David Noyola
Bipartisan Reading Incisive accounts of the Democratic and Republican parties When the tenor of politics is inflamed, partisan bickering precludes historical perspective. As attacks and recriminations pile up, politicians and…
Profs’ Picks
What’s on the nightstand of Yale’s Professors Dudley Andrew Professor of Comparative Literature, Co-Chair & DGS of the Film Studies Program I’m such a follower when it comes to “free…
Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear book by Jim Steinmeyer reviewed by Kirsti Potter
The Magic Touch An insider explains the history of stage illusions From time to time, magic and its modern practitioners still steal into the spotlight—even without counting the wily tricks…