The Year's Best Fiction

A good novel will merry up anyone's holiday.

POSTED // Nov 19,2008 - Not long ago, publishing's wise old heads bet we would be so preoccupied with defibrillating the American dream at the polls in 2008 we wouldn't have time to dream in fiction. And they were right.

Books

Books | The Apple and the Tree: The Bin Ladens explores the family before Osama brought them infamy

By John Freeman

POSTED // Apr 2,2008 - They descend from a patriarch who made a fortune in the wild west of early 20th-century capitalism. Their family history is haunted by airplane crashes, illegitimate children and the great expectations of a public life. Many of them were educated at elite...

Gift Guide

2007 Gift Guide | Book ’Em: Spread the good word for the holidays

By John Freeman

POSTED // Nov 20,2007 - Forget about silkscreen T-shirts, mix-tapes, or even the Sharper Image catalog of wonders, there’s nothing as personal as a book. For every personality, every reading level, there’s a book out there waiting to provide that lucky recipient...

Arts & Entertainment

Going for Columbine

Two new novels take differing fictionalized approaches to school shooting tragedies.

By John Freeman

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - It’s always tricky for a novelist to write about an event heavily covered by the media. Pictures speak louder than words, the cliché goes, yet public traumas deserve novelistic treatment, because only novelists can go inside the heads of participants....

Arts & Entertainment

Deep in the Fart of Texas

Vernon God Little turns American satire into scatological burlesque.

By John Freeman

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - If literary awards are a barometer for how the rest of the world views America, DBC Pierre’s victory at the 2003 Man Booker Prize ceremony for his controversial first novel Vernon God Little might predict a cold snap in our diplomatic relationships...

Arts & Entertainment

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Gabriel Garcia Marquez pays tribute to his writing roots in Living to Tell the Tale.

By John Freeman

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - When he was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer four years ago, Gabriel Garcia Marquez gamely declared to the world the disease was an “enormous stroke of luck,” since it forced him to finally write his memoirs. Living to Tell the Tale is the...

Arts & Entertainment

National Security

At the National Book Awards, a moment in the spotlight is a chance to reflect on artistic freedom.

By John Freeman

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Politics and art made uneasy bedfellows at New York City’s Marriott Marquis on the evening of Nov. 17, as roughly 1,000 publishers and writers gathered to eat steak, gossip, and award the country’s second-oldest literary prize. Thanks to the...

Arts & Entertainment

On the Fascist Track

Philip Roth gives political parable a contemporary edge in The Plot Against America.

By John Freeman

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Ten years ago it would have been inconceivable for Philip Roth to publish a novel like The Plot Against America. From My Life as a Man to the blackly comic The Human Stain, Roth made it clear that the sexual and metaphysical politics of a man’s...

Arts & Entertainment

Global Warning

Two new books make the case for an environment under attack.

By John Freeman

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - In this summer’s blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, Mother Nature throws her biggest temper tantrum yet. Melting polar icecaps cause a shift in the transatlantic current, leading to hail storms, flashfloods and all kinds of weather nastiness. In...

Arts & Entertainment

Poetic Justice

Camille Paglia turns her critical eye from feminism to poetry.

By John Freeman

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - The Hubba-Bubba pink cover art on her new book notwithstanding, Camille Paglia is courting a lower profile these days. “Oscar Wilde was a huge influence on me,” says the 58-year-old firebrand on a recent Thursday at the Philadelphia College...