To this end, and true to its title, there is no shortage of indulgence in “Ecstasy.” The characters in these poems party hard; there is plenty of sex and drinking and drugs. They smoke Sobranies and down bottles of Chablis at Café Charlot in Paris. They are seasoned regulars of New York nightlife, bouncing from … Read more
Given all the press attention and congressional hearings, the recent leak of war plans in strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen may feel like a singular event. And mistakes aside, as the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, asserted before Congress, the operation itself “was very successful and continues to be very successful.” So why … Read more
No matter how you slice it, Liz Moore has arrived. This month, an adaptation of her blockbuster novel “Long Bright River” started streaming on Peacock. And her next book, “The God of the Woods,” now on the best-seller list for 36 weeks (and counting), will soon hit the million mark in sales — a distinction … Read more
by David Szalay Szalay’s new novel traces the life of a young man in Hungary who eventually makes his way to England, following him from troubled youth to immigrant success to tragic fall. Each chapter provides glimpses of the major stages of adulthood — first love, marriage, parenthood — interwoven with intervals of aimlessness, reinvention … Read more
Linda Williams, a trailblazing scholar whose research was foundational to the field of film studies and to feminist film theory, and who wrote extensively about pornography, died on March 12 at her home in Lafayette, in Northern California. She was 78. Her husband, Paul Fitzgerald, said the cause was complications of a hemorrhagic stroke she … Read more
Gananath Obeyesekere, an anthropologist whose long career and wide-ranging social insights — which drew on Hindu texts, Freudian psychoanalysis and Christian mysticism, among many other ideas — made him a leading intellectual figure in both his native Sri Lanka and the rarefied world of Western academia, died on Tuesday at his home in Colombo, Sri … Read more
There are authors who stick to what they know, carving out careful niches for themselves. And then there are the ones who obliterate boundaries. Tanith Lee was in the second camp. An eclectic and prolific writer, she penned more than 90 novels and hundreds of short stories, ranging from fantasy and science fiction to horror, … Read more
SURREAL: The Extraordinary Life of Gala Dalí, by Michèle Gerber Klein What is the value of a muse? That’s the central question of Michèle Gerber Klein’s biography of Gala Dalí, “Surreal.” Dalí was known as “the Mother of Surrealism,” the wife of Salvador, an adviser, a seductress. But as with so many influential women, her … Read more
Fortunately, Bev’s jagged relationship with her mother proves more complex. Even after she became a pioneering female lieutenant, Bev still failed to win approval from her traditional Ma, who considers wardenship unwomanly. (“Do you wish to be a man?” Ma asks in a flashback.) Nonetheless, Bev is married to her job, and she finds fulfillment … Read more
