The Most Beautiful Man in the World by Janis and Richard Londraville “[Swan has] long since fallen off art’s historical map, his own work so completely forgotten that he’s best known, to those who have heard of him at all, as the star of Warhol’s Paul Swan and Camp. Now his obscurity is lifting. . . . More than just than the story of an artist and his dubious oeuvre, The Most Beautiful Man in the World is a depiction of a queer man trying to make it in the 20th century. . . . Whatever the quality of his … Continue reading

Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris “[Bang the Drum Slowly] has one of the loveliest last lines in American literature, a regret from Wiggen for the way the players made fun of a slow-witted and now dead teammate: ‘From here on in, I rag nobody.’ We could all use that on our coat of arms.” —George Vecsey, The New York Times (4/2/06) Continue reading

The Southpaw by Mark Harris As the temperature warmed up in recent days, there was no better way to prepare for the season than to reread Mark Harris’s The Southpaw, one of the finest sports books I know. . . . Harris loves the game itself, and he never loses sight of its value to America. —George Vecsey, The New York Times (4/2/06) Continue reading

Wedded to the Game:The Real Lives of NFL Women  by Shannon O’Toole “Wedded to the Game [is] a book that comes as a real eye-opener. . . . [This] is not a book about John Morton and Shannon O’Toole. Where their experience is illustrative O’Toole mentions it, but there’s no breast-beating about unfair treatment or bad breaks or anything else. She’s really more interested in what’s happened to other players’ wives, and some of them prove interesting indeed. . . . There’s much more about it . . . in this intelligent, thoughtful book.”—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post (4/11/06) “This … Continue reading

Tin God  by Terese Svoboda “One of the pleasures of reading Terese Svoboda’s writing is that it makes you feel smart. . . . She has written nothing less than a meditation on the infinite. . . . Svoboda switches centuries the way other writers switch days. . . . The shifts do not disorient but function as appetizing scene changes. You think you’ll read just one more section before you put the book down, and you read three. ‘Most readers are in trouble about half the time,’ E.B. White opined in his revision of William Strunk Jr.’s Elements of … Continue reading

The Boys Who Were Left Behind by John Heidenry and Brett Topel “[An] entertaining tale. . . . The book is filled with fascinating wartime detail, a good deal of bathos, and the mighty presence of Stan Musial.” —Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Globe (4/2/06) “John Heidenry and Brett Topel sketch a brilliant portrait of the 1944 World Series in The Boys Who Were Left Behind. . . . The aspect of this book that will stay with readers is its evocation of baseball-during-wartime.”—David Shribman, The Wall Street Journal (4/1/06) “Heidenry and Topel do a remarkable job of mining original … Continue reading

White Spirit by Paule Constant “This straightforward yet surreal work is beautifully written. Almost every paragraph contains an original and elaborate word construction that never rings false. Wing, who has translated two previous novels by Constant, deserves recognition for her work.”—Library Journal (3/15/06) “Sad ironies illuminate this deftly mapped journey to the postcolonial heart of darkness. . . . With prose both dark and rollicking, Constant chronicles colonialism’s terrible absurdities and reverberating effects on both Africans and Europeans.”—Publishers Weekly (2/27/06) Continue reading

t’s been nearly one hundred years since Pampille wrote about the seasonal glories of French fruits  and vegetables. Her description makes me long nostalgically for a time that probably never was quite that magical. Food in early twentieth-century France and America was more local and seasonal and the more anticipated and appreciated for those qualities. "From the end of February, you notice in the greengrocer’s shop windows–which begin to resemble the windows of jewelry shops–strawberries lying on beds of cotton in little wooden boxes. They are beautiful, and huge, but still a little pale. They are a marvel, but they … Continue reading Strawberries

ight.  So I had promised you the C.S. Lewis, but you see I never read just one book at a time and I finished this one first and my mother came from Chicago to visit me so I haven’t been reading much this week, and, well, sorry.  This should teach me not to state what I intend to write about for next week. Pretty much, if you are into sf and fantasy at all, you have at least heard of Ursula K. Le Guin.  She is well known for A Wizard of Earthsea which started the Earthsea series, and The … Continue reading The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

es, it’s time to turn those clocks ahead, drown that lost hour of sleep in an extra cup of coffee, and welcome the official start of spring. Opening Day in major league baseball is a pretty good indicator that the seasons are finally changing, since the game does depend on decent weather and cannot be played well in sleet or sub-freezing temperatures. And although there is so much to discuss, from steroid scandals to Big Unit Randy Johnson’s “love child” (dubbed “Little Unit” by the media), we must give other sports their due. Spring sports really do mimic the weather, … Continue reading A Peach Basket Case