Los Angeles Review of Books

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Sister Act: On “My Sister, the Serial Killer” by Oyinkan Braithwaite
lareviewofbooks.org - By Art Edwards
WOE BE TO the novel protagonist that finds out a loved one is complicit in a serious crime. At such a moment, a wonderful gap opens in both the …
Books
Homage, Not Larceny: On Nicholas Friedman’s “Petty Theft”
lareviewofbooks.org - By A. M. Juster
NICHOLAS FRIEDMAN’S first book of poems, Petty Theft, won the prestigious New Criterion Poetry Prize, a contest open to manuscripts that “pay close …
Books
The Work of Historical Witness: Józef Czapski’s “Lost Time” and “Inhuman Land”
lareviewofbooks.org - By Andrew Schenker
IN JUNE 1940, the Polish painter and writer Józef Czapski found himself imprisoned at the Gryazovets Soviet POW camp in northern Russia. His …
Books
Pursuing the Truth: An Introduction to Józef Czapski's “Inhuman Land: Searching for the Truth in Soviet Russia, 1941–1942”
lareviewofbooks.org - By Timothy Snyder
[1] Michał (Michel) Heller, “Człowiek przeszłości i przyszłości,” Zeszyty Literackie, no. 44 (2003): 93. In 1985, Jacques Cousteau called Czapski “the …
Books
A Feast for Polymaths: Jack Miles on Gabriel Said Reynolds’s “The Qur’an and the Bible”
lareviewofbooks.org - By Jack Miles
JANE DAMMEN MCAULIFFE — editor of the five-volume Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān and of the Cambridge Companion to the Qur’ān — distinguishes “Two …
Books
“A Proper Cynic”: An Interview with Protomartyr’s Joe Casey
lareviewofbooks.org - Robert Loss interviews Joe Casey
NAMED AFTER Saint Stephen, who in 34 AD, we’re told, fell asleep as an angry mob stoned him to death, the band Protomartyr has always veered between …
Time Travel
Hard Time: On Joyce Carol Oates’s “Hazards of Time Travel”
lareviewofbooks.org - By Alexander C. Kafka
IF YOU FEEL out of place in your era, consider the possibility that you are from the future and have been sent back in time as punishment. That’s …
Books
On Transracial Adoption: A Conversation with Alice Stephens
lareviewofbooks.org - Tillman Miller interviews Alice Stephens
AS THE AMERICAN EXPAT at the center of Alice Stephens’s debut novel, Famous Adopted People, sits at a bar on the side streets of Seoul, she’s nursing …
Books
A Book of Silences
lareviewofbooks.org - By John Glassie
SOMETIME DURING THE FALL of 1994, in a Lexington, Virginia, warehouse, the artist Cy Twombly finally completed a painting he had begun more than two …
Books
The Gifts of Humility
lareviewofbooks.org - By Costica Bradatan
WHAT IF KNOWLEDGE — the real, redeeming variety — is not power, but the opposite of it? If, for instance, to become properly human we need to run …
Books
The Verdi Festival and the Soul of Italy
lareviewofbooks.org - By Larry Wolff
FOR A LONG TIME now, many Italians have wanted to adopt Giuseppe Verdi’s choral hymn “Va, pensiero” (“Go, My Thoughts”) as their national anthem. …
Books
“Disasters at the Origin of the Sense of Disaster”: Ferrante on Fascism
lareviewofbooks.org - By Tessa Brown
WHEN I READ Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, one after another, in 2015 and 2016, I was floored by the books’ political content, which helped me …
Books
A Road to Ending Mass Incarceration?
lareviewofbooks.org - By Richard Blaustein
NEARLY ONE IN 100 adult Americans is behind bars. That means approximately 2.3 million people are incarcerated in the United States. The US has more …
Books
Those Who Care and Those Who Don’t: Children and Racism in the Trump Era
lareviewofbooks.org - By Margaret A. Hagerman
This piece appears in the latest issue of the LARB Print Quarterly Journal: No. 20 ChildhoodTo receive the LARB Quarterly Journal, become a member or …
Books
Beautifying Beale Street
lareviewofbooks.org - By Melanie Walsh
IN 2013, Barry Jenkins was “broke and tired” and creatively blocked. The 33-year-old writer-director hadn’t made a movie since his 2008 debut, …
Books
LA Stories: Howard Hughes, Starlets, and Outcast Punks in Dystopia - Los Angeles Review of Books
lareviewofbooks.org
CONTINUE TO BILLING/PAYMENT For the next step, you'll be taken to a website to complete the donation and enter your billing information. You'll then …
Books
The Pleasure of Difficulty
lareviewofbooks.org - By Davis Smith-Brecheisen
IN A RARE AND BOLD turn, the novelist, poet, and literary critic Christine Brooke-Rose dedicates her final book of criticism — Invisible Author (2002) …
Books
Little Book with Big Ambitions: Rita Indiana’s “Tentacle”
lareviewofbooks.org - By Ellen Jones
ACHY OBEJAS has chosen Tentacle as the English title for Dominican writer and musician Rita Indiana’s latest novel, originally published in Spanish as …
Books
Unringing Bell
lareviewofbooks.org - By Angela M. Sanchez
THE CITY OF Bell, California, is a three-square-mile tabletop of warehouses, loading docks, 1940s-era bungalows, and packed apartment complexes, all …
Books
A Small but Important Job: Gary Indiana’s “Vile Days”
lareviewofbooks.org - By Andrew Marzoni
AFTER IT WAS ANNOUNCED in August that The Village Voice would cease publication, New York School poet and current New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl …
Books
I Hate to Wait: On Jason Farman’s “Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World”
lareviewofbooks.org - By Lydia Pyne
READER, I HATE to wait. I hate waiting in line. I hate the inevitable delay in my productivity that I know is coming when the spinning Apple wheel …
Books
The Aesthetic Is Back; It Never Left
lareviewofbooks.org - By Jean-Thomas Tremblay
ROOTED IN the 19th century, the Romantic tradition of criticism evaluated literary works based on criteria of beauty and perfection. The appreciation …
Books
The Window and the World: On Joshua Sperling’s “A Writer of Our Time: The Life and Work of John Berger”
lareviewofbooks.org - By Robert Minto
THE DOYENS of the 1950s art world, gallerists, critics, and artists alike, often flush with the CIA’s anticommunist cash, kept politics at bay by …
Books
The Evolution of Meaning: Adrian Piper and Victor Hugo at the Hammer Museum
lareviewofbooks.org - By Annie Buckley
Featured image: Adrian Piper, Food for the Spirit, 1971. Ring binder with fourteen gelatin silver prints and forty-four annotated pages torn from a …
Books
Eclipse Expeditions
lareviewofbooks.org - By Lynne Feeley
IT’S 1907, and Mabel Loomis Todd is looking at Mars. An author, adventurer, and astronomical enthusiast, Todd has traveled from Amherst, …
Books
A Faux-Muslim Mission
lareviewofbooks.org - By Amir Khadem
MOST OF THE EARLY fictional works written in response to the 9/11 terror attack didn’t age well. In the early 2000s, literature might have seemed …
Books
What Does Literary Studies Know?
lareviewofbooks.org - By Michael W. Clune
THE STUDY OF LITERATURE occupies an uneasy place in the modern research university. First, there are problems delimiting the object of study. What …
Books
Clarence Cooper Jr. Deserved Better
lareviewofbooks.org - By Nathan Jefferson
JUST ABOUT ALL we know about Clarence Cooper Jr. is that he deserved better. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much: records indicate …
Books
De-Nazifying the “DSM”: On “Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna”
lareviewofbooks.org - By Andrew Scull
FOR NEARLY FOUR DECADES now, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, or DSM for short, has exercised a …
Books
“The Most Exhilarating Moments of His Life”: On Charles Sprawson’s “Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero”
lareviewofbooks.org - By Antonia Cundy
DRIVING AROUND FINLAND last summer, I was overwhelmed by the color blue. Flecks of orange salmon flesh and veins of forest green leaves were drowned …

Los Angeles Review of Books

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Flips

Sister Act: On “My Sister, the Serial Killer” by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Homage, Not Larceny: On Nicholas Friedman’s “Petty Theft”

The Work of Historical Witness: Józef Czapski’s “Lost Time” and “Inhuman Land”

Pursuing the Truth: An Introduction to Józef Czapski's “Inhuman Land: Searching for the Truth in Soviet Russia, 1941–1942”

A Feast for Polymaths: Jack Miles on Gabriel Said Reynolds’s “The Qur’an and the Bible”

“A Proper Cynic”: An Interview with Protomartyr’s Joe Casey

Hard Time: On Joyce Carol Oates’s “Hazards of Time Travel”

On Transracial Adoption: A Conversation with Alice Stephens

A Book of Silences

The Gifts of Humility

The Verdi Festival and the Soul of Italy

“Disasters at the Origin of the Sense of Disaster”: Ferrante on Fascism

A Road to Ending Mass Incarceration?

Those Who Care and Those Who Don’t: Children and Racism in the Trump Era

Beautifying Beale Street

LA Stories: Howard Hughes, Starlets, and Outcast Punks in Dystopia - Los Angeles Review of Books

The Pleasure of Difficulty

Little Book with Big Ambitions: Rita Indiana’s “Tentacle”

Unringing Bell

A Small but Important Job: Gary Indiana’s “Vile Days”

I Hate to Wait: On Jason Farman’s “Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World”

The Aesthetic Is Back; It Never Left

The Window and the World: On Joshua Sperling’s “A Writer of Our Time: The Life and Work of John Berger”

The Evolution of Meaning: Adrian Piper and Victor Hugo at the Hammer Museum

Eclipse Expeditions

A Faux-Muslim Mission

What Does Literary Studies Know?

Clarence Cooper Jr. Deserved Better

De-Nazifying the “DSM”: On “Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna”

“The Most Exhilarating Moments of His Life”: On Charles Sprawson’s “Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero”