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CHARLES TAYLOR
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The author of The Lost Weekend gets a lift from a new biography and a couple of reprints
F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed there were no second acts in American life.
Almost all models who achieve some degree of fame find themselves blamed for whatever agenda their era's most vocal scold happens to be pushing.
Quietly over the last 11 years, one of the strongest collaborations in contemporary cinema has been developing between the German director Christian Petzold and the actress he often chooses to star in his films, Nina Hoss. Petzold and Hoss's latest collaboration, Barbara , is their richest and finest film.
With porn so privately accessible now, we don't worry about the stigma attached to its consumption, the thought of someone pausing to peruse the art in front of an adult movie theater (hell, the thought of an adult movie theater) instead of just ducking in before being seen is almost touching.
The Cheesecake Factory
Pin-up photography has served so many purposes — outlet for male desire; outlet for feminist ire; retro kitsch emblem — that it has barely been talked about as photography.
A familiar saga
Lady Gaga's every arch move seems designed to be parsed by graduate students convinced that mainstream America is scandalized every time someone plays with — all together now — gender.
The dark end of the street
Because we live in a country that forever needs to be told to appreciate its native artists, Americans are in love with classification.
Counting casualties
No matter what bromides are trotted out in the aftermath of tragedy or disaster about the ability of people to pull together, when it comes time to memorialize the event, fissures always show.
War zero
Better than almost any current writer, Pelecanos has shown what city dwellers have known for years: that it is urban neighborhoods, and not suburbs, where what we think of as the small-town values of community and knowing your neighbors have taken root.
Biblical fury
Donald Ray Pollock's first novel is called The Devil All the Time , and that's exactly what's wrong with it.
Three literary fantasies for summer — including a true one
One of the purposes of escapist reading is to feed our daydreams.
Ace Atkins runs down Machine Gun Kelly
Ace Atkins’s new novel is what the movie Public Enemies should have been.
Inspector Montalbano might be the friend you haven't met
One of the attractions of our getting hooked on a series of novels with a recurring protagonist is the reassurance that once every year or so we'll have a friend to catch up with. What we don't like to think about is how it'll feel when that friend is in bad shape.
In happiness begins responsibility
Willard Spiegelman seems like a nice guy. He has had the good luck to live a happy life without major disaster or suffering. But as a long-time professor of English at Southern Methodist University and editor of the Southwest Review , he has ended up living his life among just those people — writers and academics.
Joe Lansdale's Hap and Leonard act out
Joe Lansdale's Hap and Leonard act out
Revisiting a modest master
Francis Wyndham's first book of short stories, Out of the War , was published in 1974, when the author was 50 and in the midst of a distinguished career of reviewing and editing.
Michael Connelly's newspaper elegy
Michael Connelly's newspaper elegy
Femme fantastic
I didn't see Honey West during its one-season, 1965-'66 prime-time run on CBS.
Burn Notice ’s honest con job
In the popular imagination, the spy is always cool, sophisticated, elegant — in other words, European.
Mailer on the ’68 conventions
“We will be fighting for forty years.” Reading those words at the end of Norman Mailer’s 1968 Miami and the Siege of Chicago , you can’t help but feel a chill.
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