French Comic Artist Blutch Makes an Experiment of ‘Mitchum’
The images in Blutch's Mitchum are technically cartoons, but the style is idiosyncratic, sometimes warping into full abstraction.
new york review of books
Providing Witness: Vasily Grossman’s ‘Stalingrad’
In Vasily Grossman, the lost and nameless victims of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union – soldier and civilian, ordinary men and women – found their literary chronicler.
What’s to Be Believed in Yoshiharu Tsuge’s ‘The Man Without Talent’?
Tsuge's narrator's mustache is no more convincing a disguise than Superman's Clark Kent glasses—which is the paradoxical point in The Man Without Talent.
Revolutionary Victor Serge Has a Message for Our Times
Victor Serge, a rare survivor of Stalin's Terror, had a keen, razor-sharp intelligence and made observations that are highly relevant to our troubled times.
Frank Santoro’s ‘Pittsburgh’ Is a Permanently Preliminary Sketch of Life
The metaphor of imperfection and transition flows beneath every page of Frank Santoro's graphic memoir, Pittsburgh.
The Path in ‘Beneath My Feet’ Is Too Narrow to Follow
It would seem high time to put together an anthology of literary voices that have been marginalized in the grand tradition of walking. Beneath My Feet: Writers on Walking is not that anthology.
From Paris, with Poetry: On Henri Cole’s ‘Orphic Paris’
Henri Cole's Orphic Paris mines the city of light to illuminate the ends of his art.
Eileen Chang’s ‘Little Reunions’ Gives a Lot of Text with Little Meaning
This dark romance set in WWII China proves cluttered, complicated, and at times confusing.
‘The Seventh Cross’ Is a Vital Tale for Anyone Concerned About the Resurgence of Totalitarianism
The beautiful storytelling of Anna Seghers' World War II classic belies its important insights into life under fascism.