Jewish Book Council Blog (Free subscription) | yesterday
Posted by Naomi Firestone Moment Magazine lists its “Intriguing Books of 2009″: Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West Michael A. Ledeen (Truman Talley) Eating Animals Jonathan Safran Foer (Little, Brown) The Clothes On Their Backs Linda Grant (Scribner) Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife Francine Prose (HarperCollins) Homer & Langley E. L. Doctorow (Random...
NewYorkology: A New York Travel Gui (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
A scaled-back but still grand revivial of the musical “ Ragtime ” opened on Broadway last week and was met with mostly positive reviews from the brand-name critics. Based on the E. L. Doctorow novel steeped in Americana and set in the opening years of the 20th century New York, ths “Ragtime” features a 28-piece orchestra and a cast of 40 under the direction of Broadway newcomeer...
Anecdotal Evidence (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
Thanks to a suggestion from Roger Boylan I’m reading The Lambs of London (2006), a short novel by Peter Ackroyd about Charles and Mary Lamb, and a young antiquarian bookseller and confidence man, William Ireland. Earlier I read Ackroyd’s lives of Blake and Shakespeare. He’s a gifted and prolific biographer and historian of Britain who draws on both vocations in his fiction. The Lamb...
Spanish Teaching (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
Seattle Post Intelligencer Theater review of "Ragtime" at Neil Simon TheatreWashington PostThe Gang's All Here: The visually stripped down production of "Ragtime" remains a warm rendering of the EL Doctorow story. (Joan Marcus Via Associated Press) By Peter Marks NEW YORK — Like many out-of-town arrivals to Manhattan, Broadway's new …This musical quilt still weaves...
Spanish Teaching (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
Seattle Post Intelligencer Broadway revival of 'Ragtime' plucks at the heartstringsUSA TodayBy Joan Marcus By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY NEW YORK — The musical Ragtime is based on EL Doctorow's sprawling historical novel, which offered food for thought by tracing the dawn of 20th-century American society through real and imagined characters. …'Ragtime' revival puts renewed emphasis [...]...
Books on the Brain (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow is a work of fiction and a first person narrative about two real life men, the eccentric Collyer brothers of New York, who were killed by their own filth and clutter in their home in 1947. I’m a fan of the show Hoarders on A & E. The compulsion to [...]
the purest of treats (Free subscription) | 11/07/2009
He never graduated high school. He laid brick and cinder blocks for a living. Sometimes he pointed out houses and other buildings he had worked on. He used to tell me, "I worked hard, very hard." He started reading seriously as a young boy. He knew a lot about history and geography. When I knew him he read mainly fiction. He liked most kinds of popular novels but especially ones that were...
About Literature: Contemporary (Free subscription) | 10/12/2009
Homer and Langley Collyer were hoarding hermits who lived in the Harlem of the early 20th Century. They died in 1947 when the hoard they had collected over the years collapsed. Langley, who created traps among the collection, was caught by one of them and crushed to death. Homer, who was blind, then starved to death at age 70 after a lifetime in their four-story Fifth Avenue mansion. E.L. Doctorow...
East Bay View (mostly a food blog) (Free subscription) | 10/12/2009
Not a pure response to this , since my working definition of "of the decade" is more flexible. Though the Brits are overrepresented (too much reading of the Guardian) my list is more internationalist than the Millions list, plus I like some picture books a lot. Comics aside, there's very little genre fiction on the list: I find it hard to work out what's worth reading, as recommendations,...
Eat, Sleep & Read! (Free subscription) | 10/11/2009
Excerpted from the novel HOMER & LANGLEY , that just came out from Random House this September 1, 2009 by E. L. Doctorow . Langley said he had never heard of the Police Beneficiaries League and asked what its work was. The cop didn't seem to hear. I leave the accounting to you in good faith, Mr. Coller, and I will come by of a Wednesday morning for the remittance and no questions asked, but with...
Erik's Choice (Free subscription) | 10/09/2009
E.L. Doctorow, The March (Random House, 2005, 2006). Ingredients: Take Gore Vidal, John Steinbeck, Walt Whitman, and Toni Morrison. Add freedmen and women, common soldiers (some of them deserters and some of them prisoners), a clinical doctor and his assistants, a photographer and his assistant, an English journalist, plantation owners, some colorful generals, and Abe Lincoln. Blend. Pour into a narrative...
Every Day Is a Miracle (Free subscription) | 10/05/2009
Sunday morning: Browsing in Powell's After leisurely reading the Sunday Oregonian in bed, checking out of the hotel, and stopping for a quick coffee/tea and snack at Starbucks, we went off to spend an hour at Powell's . That is my kind of getaway: two opportunities to browse in bookstores, two days in a row! And especially lovely: no one harassed me and offered me assistance! They stayed behind their...
Silliman's Blog (Free subscription) | 10/05/2009
Reb Livingston offers an account of my talk § Nada Gordon on Adfempo ( part 1 ) ( part 2 ) ( part 3 ) Michelle Naka Pierce: Adfempo constellations § Nathalie Anderson on Teresa Leo § Amiri Baraka turns 75 § Eunoia, the upgrade § Curtis Faville on A Controversy of Poets Brandon Brown : describing traditions apophatically § Harryette Mullen : meaning & wordplay §...
Erik's Choice (Free subscription) | 10/03/2009
E.L. Doctorow's World's Fair (1985) culminates with two 1940 visits to the 1939/1940 World's Fair at Flushing Meadows Park, Queen's, New York City, but much of the story takes place during the 1930s in or near the Bronx. Doctorow's semi-autobiographical tale centers around Edgar, the primary narrator, and his extended family. The finely articulated attention to detail and subtle character development...
92Y Blog (Free subscription) | 10/02/2009
Author and Bronx native E.L. Doctorow was here this spring Unterberg Poetry Center with journalist and author Roger Rosenblatt. They spoke about Doctorow’s time as a student at Bronx High School of Science back when it was an all boys school, being named after Edgar Allen Poe, and his new novel, Homer & Langley . The novel, he explained, is loosely based on the Collyer brothers of Harlem...
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