COLUMN ARCHIVE
Hop Scotch
Most recent stories
Apr. 14, 2011 / 808: Destroyer
Hopscotch on Hopscotch
Our final books column tackles its namesake novel
Where is the first installment of this column? It was published three editors ago, in the summer of 2006. I can't find it anywhere, neither on paper nor… Read more »
Mar. 31, 2011 / 806 : Insidious
That dreaded achievment
The White Hotel is rich and expansive
Both epistolary novel and poem, erotic fantasia and Holocaust memorial, homage to psychoanalysis and lament for the failures of communism, The White Hotel, first published 30 years ago,… Read more »
Mar. 09, 2011 / 803 : A city by the people
A posthumous portrait
A Posthumous Confession a deeply repulsive must-read
Arresting from its first stark sentence ("My wife is dead and buried" ), nearly relentless in its catch-all combo of misanthropy and self-loathing, yet consistently compelling and perversely… Read more »
» Books / Feb. 23, 2011 / 801 : Amy Goodman
And repeat
The Voice Imitator a bridge into the works of Thomas Bernhard
I have recently endeavoured to compel fellow readers to explore the works of the late Austrian novelist, playwright and poet Thomas Bernhard, whose novels I have only recently… Read more »
» The Film That Changed My Life: 30 Directors on their Epiphanies in the Dark / Feb. 09, 2011 / 799 : Valentines Style
Analyzing a blown mind
Directors chime in on The Film That Changed My Life
Something happens to us when we try to come to terms with formative experience. Some of us can articulate what constitutes the turning point in our lives. Some… Read more »
» Books / Jan. 26, 2011 / 797 : Ann Vriend
Family dynamic
Allen Shawn's autistic Twin central to his life
Twin (Viking, $32.50), the second memoir from Allen Shawn, explores the nature of Shawn's relationship to his autistic twin sister, Mary, who was removed from the family home… Read more »
» BOOKS / Jan. 12, 2011 / 795 : Great Indoors
Without telling
Paul Bowles' autobiography deepens his mysteries
There's an incident described in Paul Bowles' autobiography Without Stopping, relayed without sentiment or much elaboration, in which the author flips a coin as a method of deciding… Read more »
» Books / Dec. 29, 2010 / 793 : Selling Out
Dark nights
Adalbert Stifter's Rock Crystal provides solace at solstice
"In most places, midnight as the very hour of his birth is solemnized by ritual of great splendor, to which the bells ring out their heartsome invitation through… Read more »
» While the Women Are Sleeping / Dec. 15, 2010 / 791: NYE Guide 2010
Fiction from beyond the grave
While the Women Are Sleeping a puzzling collection
The 10 pieces included in While the Women Are Sleeping (New Directions, $27.50), a slim collection of Javier Marías' short prose newly translated by Margaret Jull Costa, form… Read more »
» The Mind's Eye / Dec. 01, 2010 / 789 : Beckett Shorts
Painful insights
The Mind's Eye surprisingly personal
In a sense, famed septuagenarian Anglo-American neurologist and storyteller Oliver Sacks' The Mind's Eye (Knopf, $32) picks up right where his earlier Musicophelia left off: the new book's… Read more »
