The New York Review of Books - USA (2021-03-25)

(Antfer) #1

Contents


4 Regina Marler The Inland Sea by Madeleine Watts
Ruthie Fear by Maxim Loskutoff


8 Boris Dralyuk Poem


9 Fintan O’Toole To Hell with Unity


12 Evan Kindley Character: Three Inquiries in Literary Studies
by Amanda Anderson, Rita Felski, and Toril Moi
Character: The History of a Cultural Obsession by Marjorie Garber
Character as Form by Aaron Kunin, with illustrations by David Scher
Balzac’s Lives by Peter Brooks


14 Tishani Doshi Poem


15 Marina Warner Merpeople: A Human History by Vaughn Scribner


17 Andrew Martin Cowboy Graves: Three Novellas by Roberto Bolaño,
translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
The Spirit of Science Fiction by Roberto Bolaño,
translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer


20 Darryl Pinckney A Promised Land by Barack Obama


23 Vivian Gornick In Love by Alfred Hayes, with an introduction by Frederic Raphael
My Face for the World to See by Alfred Hayes, with an introduction by David Thomson
The End of Me by Alfred Hayes, with an introduction by Paul Bailey


26 Maureen N. McLane Poem


28 Gary Saul Morson Woe from Wit: A Verse Comedy in Four Acts by Alexander Griboedov,
translated from the Russian by Betsy Hulick
The Death of the Vazir- Mukhtar by Yuri Tynianov,
translated from the Russian by Susan Causey and edited by Vera Tsareva- Brauner
The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar by Yury Tynyanov,
translated from the Russian by Anna Kurkina Rush and Christopher Rush


31 Dan Chiasson Remain in Love: Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Tina by Chris Frantz


33 Lydia Wilson The Frightened Ones by Dima Wannous,
translated from the Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette


35 John Gray Witcraft: The Invention of Philosophy in English by Jonathan Rée


40 Tash Aw Inheritors by Asako Serizawa


43 Deborah Eisenberg The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency by Tove Ditlevsen,
translated from the Danish by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman
The Faces by Tove Ditlevsen, translated from the Danish by Tiina Nunnally


46 Letters from Jeff Zorn, Jay Neugeboren, Joel Ray, and Robert O. Paxton


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nybooks.com: Matt Seaton, Editor; Lucy McKeon, Associate Editor.


The artwork on the cover is by Joanna Neborsky.
The New York Review of Books (ISSN 0028-7504), published 20 times a year, monthly in January, June, August, and September; semi-monthly in February, March, April,
May, July, October, November, and December. NYREV, Inc., 435 Hudson Street, Suite 300, New York, NY 10014-3994. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY 10001
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Andrew Katzenstein, Gabriel Winslow-Yost
Editor-at-Large: Daniel Mendelsohn


Founding Editors : Robert B. Silvers (1929–2017)
Barbara Epstein (1928–2006)
Publisher: Rea S. Hederman
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What’s new on
nybooks.com

TASH AW ’s most recent novel, We, the Survivors, was published
in 2019. His family memoir, Strangers on a Pier, will be pub-
lished in the fall.


DAN CHIASSON ’s fifth book of poetry, The Math Campers,
was just published. He teaches at Wellesley.


TISHANI DOSHI ’s most recent book is a novel, Small Days and
Nights. Her fourth collection of poems, A God at the Door, will be
published in the UK in April and in the US in August.


BORIS DRALYUK is the Editor in Chief of the Los Angeles
Review of Books. He is the cotranslator, with Robert Chandler
and Irina Mashinski, of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry and
a translator of Isaac Babel, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Maxim Osipov,
and others.


DEBORAH EISENBERG ’s latest collection of short stories is
Your Duck Is My Duck.


VIVIAN GORNICK is the author, most recently, of Unfinished
Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader.


JOHN GRAY is Emeritus Professor of European Thought at the
London School of Economics. His book Feline Philosophy: Cats
and the Meaning of Life was published last year.


EVAN KINDLEY is the author, most recently, of Poet-Critics
and the Administration of Culture. He teaches at Pomona.


REGINA MARLER is the author of Bloomsbury Pie: The Mak-
ing of the Bloomsbury Boom. She edited Queer Beats: How the
Beats Turned America on to Sex and Selected Letters of Vanessa
Bell.


ANDREW MARTIN is the author of Early Work, a novel, and
Cool for America, a story collection.
MAUREEN N. MCLANE is the author of six books of poetry
and of My Poets, a hybrid of memoir and criticism. Her More
Anon: Selected Poems will be published this year.
GARY SAUL MORSON is the Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of
the Arts and Humanities and a Professor in the Slavic Languages
and Literatures Department at Northwestern. His latest book is
Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us,
cowritten with Morton Schapiro.
FINTAN O’TOOLE is a columnist for The Irish Times and the
Leonard L. Milberg Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton. His
most recent book is The Politics of Pain: Postwar England and
the Rise of Nationalism.
DA R RY L PI NCK N EY ’s latest book is Busted in New York and
Other Essays. A new edition of Blackballed: The Black Vote and
US Democracy has just been published.
MARINA WARNER ’s Inventory of a Life Mislaid: An Unreli-
able Memoir, about her childhood in Cairo, will be published in
the US in the spring. She is a Distinguished Fellow of All Souls
College, Oxford, and Professor of English and Creative Writing
at Birkbeck College, University of London.
LYDIA WILSON is a Research Associate at the Computer
Laboratory and in Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge and a
Research Fellow at the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable
Conflict at Oxford. She is an Editor at the Cambridge Literary
Review and a Contributing Editor at Newlines, and recently pre-
sented a BBC series on the history of writing.

Ŷ Molly Jong-Fast: Inside Grandpa’s FBI File
Ŷ Anjan Sundaram: A Migrant’s Patrimony

Ŷ Aida Alami: The Arab Spring, a Decade On
Ŷ Maeve Higgins : Biden’s Border Security
Plus : J. Hoberman on Vittorio De Seta, Nicole Rudick on Bea Nettles, and more...

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