In Memoriam: Leonard Nimoy
A few thoughts in memory of Leonard Nimoy. First, about the actor. We venerate Nimoy because of the magic, the serendipity, of the perfect marriage of actor and role. His talent as an actor was limited — not absent, just limited:…
A Rigor of Chessmasters, Not of Angels: Gene Wolfe, Literature as Puzzle
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe’s ponderous four-volume fantasy[1] novel, gets brought up a lot in discussions of science fiction as high literature. Perhaps not unconnectedly, the book has an extremely ardent core of fans among the more…
Review: Solar by Ian McEwan
There’s hardly anything surprising one could say about this lightweight, clockwork-plotted black comedy, except that it’s among the most bitter and emotionless of Ian McEwan’s many bitter, emotionless novels. All McEwan’s usual virtues are in evidence here — the intricately…
Notes on the Politics of the Humanities
The humanities academy is now in the middle of a full-fledged economic collapse. The MLA, which advertises almost all North American tenure-track jobs in literature, recorded the largest fall ever in the number of openings this year; the number of…
Review: The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt
It’s hard not to feel that the dedication is a symptom of everything that’s wrong with this sprawling novel of nearly 700 pages. The book is dedicated to its editor — who, if she had done her job, probably would’ve…
On Doris Lessing’s Space Operas
Doris Lessing’s Canopus in Argos series must be as little read as thoughtful, clever genre fiction by a bestselling Nobel recipient could possibly be. There are a lot of likely reasons for this, most of them not very good: politico-ideological…
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