Robert Sapolsky is a neuroendocrinologist (someone who studies the interactions between the nervous and endocrine systems) and a professor of biology, neuroscience and neurosurgery, though it would be easier – if equally intimidating – to simply call him a genius. It’s […]
Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business
by on April 23, 2014
I was fourteen when I first read Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business, the first entry in his Deptford Trilogy and certainly one of the most acclaimed Canadian novels ever written. Davies was something of a Canadian institution, widely enough read in his day […]
Ayaan Hirsi Ali And Brandeis University’s Shame
by on April 15, 2014
Earlier this year, Brandeis University announced that Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born advocate for women’s rights and vocal critic of Islam, would be among those awarded an honorary degree at the spring convocation. A few days ago, in response to […]
Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (Book One)
by on April 13, 2014
It takes something approaching egomania to write a six-volume, 3500 page memoir when you’re barely 40 years old, and a rebellious indifference to propriety to borrow your title from one of history’s biggest egomaniacs, but the self-portrait emerging from Karl […]
Friedrich Schiller’s Essays
by on April 9, 2014
Friedrich Schiller was a German poet, philosopher and playwright, hugely influential in his day but far less widely read now, his star eclipsed by his contemporaries Goethe and Kant. His Essays, a posthumous cobbling together of his various writings on […]
Ian McEwan’s Saturday
by on March 31, 2014
At the heart of Ian McEwan’s Saturday is successful neurosurgeon and loving husband and father Henry Perowne, whose supremely rational worldview McEwan uses, almost excessively, as a springboard to incorporate into the narrative broader philosophical musings about concepts as varied as free […]
Jonathan Rauch’s Kindly Inquisitors
by on March 27, 2014
I came across Jonathan Rauch by accident when I stumbled upon a video of him defending free speech on behalf of F.I.R.E., the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a non-profit group established to defend civil liberties, particularly the freedom of […]
Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn
by on March 23, 2014
For a tiny island nation with a population under seven million, Ireland boasts more than its share of brilliant writers, from Swift down to Yeats, Shaw, Joyce, Beckett and the late Seamus Heaney. Is it inspirational scenery? or perhaps the […]
James Wood’s The Fun Stuff
by on March 19, 2014
In starting this blog, and in writing literary criticism more generally, I had in mind an ideal, a mode of writing to aspire to based on the critical writings that had given me the most pleasure. James Wood is that […]
Paul Harding’s Tinkers
by on February 27, 2014
Paul Harding’s first novel, Tinkers, was published in 2009 when he was 42 years old, a late start for a then-unknown graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, but no doubt he was gratified to find any publisher after the slew of early rejections. […]
Leo Damrosch’s Jonathan Swift
by on February 25, 2014
I have to begin by thanking my father for making a gift of this book. It was published just last year, in 2013, and I find myself amazed both at its reception – as I write this it stands in […]
Kingsley Amis’ The Crime Of The Century
by on February 22, 2014
I’m not sure how well-known Kingsley Amis is on this side of the Atlantic, particularly among my generation. His son Martin has achieved a much wider recognition in America, though his star is still highest in Britain. Both father and […]
Simon Baron-Cohen’s The Science Of Evil
by on February 5, 2014
We have always had a morbid fascination with evil. You see it in our religions and myths and philosophies. You see it in the many words we’ve developed to speak of evil: wicked, sinful, malicious, reprobate, malevolent, heinous and so […]
Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn To Decadence
by on February 2, 2014
I am in awe of Jacques Barzun, as surely anyone who has just finished his magnum opus From Dawn To Decadence: 500 Years Of Western Cultural Life must be. Simply put, this book is an anachronism: it belongs not to our century […]
George Saunders’ Tenth Of December
by on January 31, 2014
George Saunders’ latest short story collection Tenth of December was released early last year, to the kind of critical acclaim – “The best book you’ll read this year,” fawned a NYT critic in January – that inflates egos and bank accounts, and turns a […]