Mary Roach cruises the alimentary canal

There's something about Mary

Mary Roach is to writers what the Mütter Museum is to museums. She joyfully mines human taboos, from human cadavers to feces to the alimentary canal, and consequently seems to have cornered a lucrative market.

Alaina Johns

Apr 09, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

A Dan Hoffman memory

To him, Whitman was more than a bridge

The late Dan Hoffman, my favorite Philadelphia poet, was the kind of poet that Walt Whitman asked Americans to cherish.

Patrick D. Hazard

Apr 02, 2013 · Articles · 2 minute read

Andrei Codrescu's "Bibliodeath'

Requiem for the printed word

Andrei Codrescu grew up in Communist Romania, where printed words were deemed more dangerous than bombs. Now he lives in a virtual world inundated with too many instantly disposable virtual words. Ah, but he has a solution.

AJ Sabatini

Jan 26, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

Jim Quinn's "Waiting For the Wars to End'

What did you do in the war (and don't ask which one)?

The former food and language critic Jim Quinn now writes unflinching yet tender characterizations of people slogging through life. Both of these stories are sadly funny and horrifically real.

Merilyn Jackson

Jan 21, 2013 · Articles · 3 minute read

Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon' revisited

Into the wild, then and now: Setting boundaries, and pushing them

In Mason & Dixon, Thomas Pynchon emulates his protagonists by pushing new boundaries and venturing into unknown realms, both loony and profound, in the process risking not his life but his reputation and his worshipful constituency. It's a great novel; and I say this without having understood any more than, oh, 10 percent of it.

Bob Levin

Dec 31, 2012 · Articles · 7 minute read

A trio of new poetry translations

Nabokov meets his match

The great novelist Vladimir Nabokov was a poet too, as his latest collection reminds us. Two other late European poets, also blessed with recent translations, may be worth even more of your attention.

Andrew Mangravite

Dec 29, 2012 · Articles · 3 minute read

Verlaine and Trakl, complete at last

Second life for two Symbolists

Here is a pair of worthy possibilities for the poetry-lover in your life: A complete work by Verlaine and a first-time ever translation of Trakl's early poems and dramatic works into English.

Andrew Mangravite

Dec 22, 2012 · Articles · 2 minute read

Two French Symbolists in new translation

What's old is new again

Hats off to translator Brian Stableford and Black Coat Press for presenting American readers with a world of new 19th-Century French fiction not seen here since the 1920s.

Andrew Mangravite

Dec 10, 2012 · Articles · 3 minute read

Helga Weiss's Holocaust diary

A new generation confronts the Holocaust

As Holocaust survivors and perpetrators die off, will that most horrifying human experience fade from memory? As a child of Holocaust victims, I can attest that the opposite is true: What the traumatized survivors wish to forget, their children are even more determined to confront.

Martin Beck Matustik

Dec 04, 2012 · Articles · 4 minute read

"This Wild Joy': Bill Van Buskirk's poetry

Adam without Eden

Bill Van Buskirk's verse collection is a powerfully engaging book by a poet whose work depicts the hard pains and joys of living, and who deserves wider recognition. This Wild Joy That Thrills Outside the Law. Poems by Bill Van Buskirk. Infinity Publishing, 2010. 100 pages; $9.95. www.amazon.com.

Robert Zaller

Nov 25, 2012 · Articles · 5 minute read