Prickly, eccentric, endlessly complex — the Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector (1920-77) has remained a bundle of contradictions years after her death. Lispector was idolized for her best-selling stories of emotional tumult and alienation; her glamorous appearance — she was famously compared to a “she-wolf” — and immensely private nature only added to the mystique. Her … Read more
RED SCARE: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America, by Clay Risen When the end came for Joe McCarthy, it was Edward R. Murrow who delivered the knockout blow. On his CBS program “See It Now,” Murrow ran damning footage of the red-baiting Wisconsin senator, who appeared hectoring and disheveled to viewers. Murrow proclaimed … Read more
There were always those who did not conform: Krist’s wide canvas is peopled with intriguing minor figures like Ah Toy, a Chinese immigrant sex worker; a French frog-catcher, Jeanne Bonnet, who fell afoul of restrictions on cross-dressing; and Mary Ellen Pleasant, a civil rights pioneer who fought to desegregate the city’s streetcars. But these individuals … Read more
On a recent afternoon on 42nd Street in Manhattan, a mythological bird was preparing to take flight. Backstage at the New Victory Theater, a black-clad puppeteer put on an elaborately stylized mask and stepped into a beam of light, throwing the shadow of fluttering hands onto a large scrim. Nearby, two other performers were gearing … Read more
Felice Picano, who in the 1970s and ’80s helped usher in a golden age of gay literature as the author of groundbreaking novels and memoirs and as the publisher of dozens of books by gay writers, died on Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 81. The cause of his death, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, was … Read more
John Feinstein, an indefatigable sportswriter for The Washington Post and the author of more than 40 books, including the best sellers “A Season on the Brink” (1986) and “A Good Walk Spoiled” (1996), died on Thursday at his brother’s home in McLean, Va. He was 69. His brother, Robert, said the cause was probably a … Read more
Jennifer Johnston, an admired Irish novelist whose precise, carefully woven fictions depicted historic fault lines in her country’s upper crust and frailties in its latter-day middle class, died on Feb. 25 in Dun Laoghaire, outside Dublin. She was 95. Her death, in a nursing home, was announced by President Michael D. Higgins of Ireland, who … Read more
We recommend a bounty of good fiction this week, with a collection by Torrey Peters, a mystery by Deanna Raybourn and new novels from Chaim Grade, Karen Russell and others. In nonfiction, we like a journalist’s look back at a little-remembered episode of police brutality from the 1980s and a damning, juicy tell-all by a … Read more
The story of how James Reason became an authority on the psychology of human error begins with a teapot. It was the early 1970s. He was a professor at the University of Leicester, in England, studying motion sickness, a process that involved spinning his subjects round and round, and occasionally revealing what they had eaten … Read more
HYPOCHONDRIA, by Will Rees As a cultural attitude, “ignorance is bliss” has sort of fallen out of favor. Much more de rigueur: “Do the work,” “the only way out is through,” “see something say something.” Never mind that Thomas Gray’s 18th-century adage happens to be true, and, in the case of the inner machinations of … Read more