Dresden
Our Critic's Tip Sheet on Current Reading: Against the Semicolon; Vonnegut in Dresden; Women at War
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Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007).
Last week The Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk) canvassed writers living and dead—an eclectic selection including Jonathan Franzen, Zoë Heller, George Bernard Shaw and Gertrude Stein—for their opinion of the semicolon. Perhaps the most vehement response came from the late Kurt Vonnegut: “If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” read more »
Precise Moral Judgments Blurred by War's Messiness
In some contexts, the good, decent humanist approach seems more callous than sheer bloody-mindedness read more »
Precise Moral Judgments Blurred by War’s Messiness
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Dresden after three days of continuous Allied bombing.
In some contexts, the good, decent humanist approach seems more callous than sheer bloody-mindedness read more »
Is This Eccentric Grieving-Or Just Literary Posturing?
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Houghton Mifflin, 326 pages, $24.95.
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Lasar Segall's Happy Life Didn't Make for Great Art
There are artists whose lives are more compelling than their art, and the Brazilian painter Lasar Se read more »
