John Freeman

The Year's Best Fiction

A good novel will merry up anyone's holiday.

• By John Freeman
• 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.
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Books | The Apple and the Tree: The Bin Ladens explores the family before Osama brought them infamy

• By John Freeman
• 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...
• Tags: Books

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

• By John Freeman
• 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...
• Tags: Gift Guide

The Frozen Chosen

Michael Chabon gives pulp mystery a spiritual spin in The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.

• By John Freeman
• Three years ago, Michael Chabon delivered a knock on the chin of literary readers who turned up their noses at mysteries, thrillers and the like. “In spite of the continuing disdain or neglect in which most of the ‘non-literary’ genres are...

Mysterious Sources

Donald Revell’s poetry hides and reveals in equal measure in Pennyweight Windows.

• By John Freeman
• template_imageUniversity of Utah professor Donald Revell grew up in the Bronx, where beauty lurks like a fugitive on the lam. As a result, he didn’t encounter anything remotely lovely until he went to church, where he was seduced by the language...

Poetic Justice

Camille Paglia turns her critical eye from feminism to poetry.

• By John Freeman
• 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...

National Security

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

• By John Freeman
• 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...

On the Fascist Track

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

• By John Freeman
• 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...

Global Warning

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

• By John Freeman
• 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...

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
• 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...