The Doctor Is In
Doctor Samuel Johnson, being one of history’s most storied critics, has endured his own share of criticism. Once we even heard the claim that Johnson’s work is nothing more than antiquated flatulence. A bold claim indeed. We’re more inclined to let Johnson’s work stand as it is and permit the reader the chance to decide. One of today’s preeminent critics, Harold Bloom, reviews in the NY Times the influence of Johnson’s legacy. Elsewhere, a jetsetting debut of poems is reviewed in Open Letters Monthly, Kiran Desai’s award-winning body of work is reconsidered, and the Boston Review investigates the ongoing struggle between immigrants and the American way of life. Further down the road, the Chronicle describes Paul Auster as a spooky, chilly writer, while other well-known authors weigh in on what it takes to write a great novel. Finally, it’s good old Alan Bennett, waxing poetic about how he turned W.H. Auden into a character in one of his plays. We await history’s judgment. — Kevin Murphy
– It has been three centuries since Dr. Johnson was born, on Sept. 7, 1709. He died on Dec. 13, 1784, still struggling for the mixed blessing of more life. His Falstaffian vitalism is always my first thought when I reread, teach again or continue brooding upon the canonical critic of Western literature. — Samuel Johnson in the NY Times
– In her first collection of poems, Water the Moon, Fiona Sze-Lorrain invokes this other shore, taking us on an odyssey across countries and cultures, through time and across generations. From Singapore, she reaches the very real shores of New York and France, testing the boundaries of language and culture, becoming a polyglot voice of the diaspora. — Fiona Sze-Lorrain in Open Letters Monthly
– When Kiran Desai’s Inheritance Of Loss won the 2006 Booker Prize, a few eyebrows were raised. Although she had a famous mother (Anita Desai) who had herself been on the Booker shortlist three times, Kiran was relatively unknown. Comparatively few had read her book, and the bookies had her down at fifth or sixth favourite. — Kiran Desai in the Guardian
Just Like You And Me
– Although the term “criminal aliens” has no precise definition, its broadening use reflects a trend in dealing with immigrants. With the post-9/11 creation of DHS and its two agencies—Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—a wide sector of aliens increasingly became the focus of joint efforts by immigration and law enforcement officers. — Immigration in the Boston Review
– Richard Powers lounges in bed all day and speaks his novels aloud to a laptop computer with voice-recognition software. Junot Diaz, author of the Pulitzer-prize winning novel “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” shuts himself in the bathroom and perches on the edge of the tub with his notebook when he’s tackling a knotty passage. Hilary Mantel, whose Tudor drama “Wolf Hall” claimed this year’s Man Booker Prize, jumps in the shower when she gets stuck. “The number of pages I’ve got that are water marked, I can’t tell you,” Ms. Mantel said. — Novel Writing in the Wall Street Journal
Spooky
– Paul Auster is a chilly, spooky writer. His characters find themselves trapped in Escher-like, psychological mazes. His worlds feel as though they’re governed by outside forces with strange, inhuman ideas. “Invisible,” his 15th novel, is warmer and more human than the stuff he’s famous for. — Paul Auster in the San Francisco Chronicle
– By the time Auden came to live in the Brewhouse, a cottage in the grounds of Christ Church, in 1972 I had long since left Oxford and in any case would never have had the nerve to speak to him. I’d first heard his voice in Exeter College hall some time in 1955. The lower end of the scholars’ table where I was sitting was only a yard or two from high table where the dons dined and, hearing those harsh, quacking tones without knowing whose they were, I said to my neighbour that it sounded like the voice of the devil. — Alan Bennett in the London Review of Books
Video: Alan Bennett Telling Tales
