In this week’s penultimate installment of “On Being Human,” Karl Wolff reviews Jim Thompson’s 1952 underground classic “The Killer Inside Me,” a book told from the perspective of a small town deputy sheriff from Texas who also happens to be a serial killer. Continue reading On Being Human: “The Killer Inside Me,” by Jim Thompson
This week at CCLaP, Karl Wolff reviews “The Cage” by Gordon Weiss, a former UN worker who writes about the human rights disaster of Sri Lanka in its battle with the Tamil Tigers. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: The Cage, by Gordon Weiss
Are Michael Bay’s Transformers movies and the trend of using drones for assassination part of the same moral sickness? Continue reading Democracy is not for the People, by Josef Kaplan @thethepoetryblog
If you liked “the Da Vinci Code” or similar books involving conspiracies and ancient artifacts, “The Radix,” by Brett King may be the book for you. Continue reading The Radix, by Brett King @ Joe Bob Briggs
These remarks will be classified in The Critic’s Notebook. Unlike a more tightly constructed and formal book review, these notes will possess a larval nature: impressionistic, half-formed, spontaneous. Continue reading Translation Tuesdays: The Kindly Ones, by Jonathan Littell
This week in the CCLaP series “On Being Human,” Karl Wolff analyses Samuel Beckett’s groundbreaking “Trilogy,” where the famed avant-garde writer sought the essence of what it is to be human by stripping away the setting, plot, and characters of three small novels in a row. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: On Being Human: The Trilogy, by Samuel Beckett
Karl Wolff reviews Firefly by Severo Sarduy (release date, March 2013), a writer praised by Roland Barthes, for his verbal richness and dreamlike evocation of pre-Castro Cuba. Continue reading Translation Tuesdays: Firefly, by Severo Sarduy
This week I review “The Passage of Power,” Robert Caro’s 4th volume in his epic biography of Lyndon Johnson. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: The Passage of Power, by Robert Caro
A Spy in the Ruins by Christopher Bernard constructs a postapocalyptic anti-narrative replete with verbal richness, political aggression, and erotic tenderness. Continue reading Critical Appraisals: A Spy in the Ruins, by Christopher Bernard
Today in CCLaP’s “On Being Human,” Karl Wolff’s look at humanity as explained through various famous pieces of pop culture: It’s Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s infamous “Venus in Furs,” the 1870 book that inspired the sexual term ‘masochism.’ Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: On Being Human: Venus in Furs, by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
