Facts and Fictions
I first met Gabriel García Márquez on Martha’s Vineyard about ten years ago. Since then it’s been a privilege and a pleasure to count this great Latin American writer… More
Beauty’s Kamikaze
Just before noon, he stepped out on the balcony and delivered a short speech, appealing to the soldiers to join him and his men in death as true men… More
The Weight of Words
Talking about Mishima the writer is difficult without invoking Mishima the individual and Mishima the suicide. A lot of what’s been said tonight—by me principally—is extratextual. The question is:… More
The Real Worlds
Many of us who come from the Caribbean are astounded when people speak of the “implausibility” of magical realism. For in our worldview, as in our much-loved Gabriel García… More
Romantic Realism
That dinner party is etched in my memory for many reasons: the discussion during soup of the American embargo on Cuba; the recital during entrées by Bill Styron,… More
Laying It Down
This Langston riff is for that cardigan-sweater-wearin’ blues poet Raymond R. Patterson, Professor Emeritus, CCNY, author of 26 Ways of Looking at a Black Man and Elemental Blues.I found Langston behind his… More
Life and Deaths
ALAN ADELSON: In Regions of the Great Heresy, Jerzy Ficowski gives us this eloquent description of Bruno Schulz’s last days:The foreboding that had haunted Schulz his entire life was… More
Omniscient Omnivore
Gertrude Stein was well aware of all of this. She was a scientist of language and of thought and music—harmony and melody—in an uncanny way. Words like omniscient and… More
Performance Art
Here’s a theory—or elements of a theory—of the comic. In this theory, the comic contains or embraces six elements. The first is the quality of deadpan, of impassivity; for… More
Being in Her
That’s what’s so wonderful when you immerse yourself in the tide of this novel. It’s somewhat like listening to a piece of music by Philip Glass or John Adams… More
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