By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
Nathan Englander and Jonathan Safran Foer's new version, it is explained, "is not a work of history or philosophy, not a prayer book, a user's manual, timeline, poem, or palimpsest — and yet it is all of these things." It is, that is, all of the things it isn't any of. Don't try to make sense of that after your Seder's fourth glass of wine.
It almost doesn't matter whether "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is a good movie or a bad one. It's a 9/11 movie, so how one reacts will inevitably hinge to some extent on individual feelings about the terrorist attacks that stunned and shocked Americans a decade ago.
If Sandra Bullock was hesitant to return to acting, she now appears to be fully back
Emotions run high in "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close," one of the boldest cinematic tacklings of Sept. 11 yet.
Diana Joy Colbert, the wife of author Charles Bock whose battle with leukemia inspired widespread sympathy and support among the New York literary community, died Thursday. She was 41.
The latest book by Milan Kundera is a set of mini-essays about other artists. The three earlier critical works by Mr. Kundera were "The Curtain," "The Art of the Novel" and "Testaments Betrayed."
Time magazine's Lev Grossman has an interesting -- if overwritten -- piece on why there's no towering figure among today's youngish literary fiction writers. He cites Zadie Smith ("White Teeth"), Jonathan Safran Foer ("Everything is Illuminated"), Jhumpa Lahiri ("The Namesake") and Gary Shteyngart ("Absurdistan") as imperfect candidates for the elusive title of "Voice of a Generation."
"About five years ago, I noticed a longing in myself," Mr. Foer wrote in the New York Times, explaining his interest in this project. "Perhaps it was inspired by fatherhood, or just growing older. Despite having been raised in an intellectual and self-consciously Jewish home, I knew almost nothing about what was supposedly my own belief system."
Kind of newish, not so Jewish 'New American Haggadah' updates Passover story →
Mr. Foer explained in the New York Times article that his 6-year-old son's captivation with biblical stories was another motivation for his participation in this project, thereby revealing what would appear to be the target audience for the "New American Haggadah."
Kind of newish, not so Jewish 'New American Haggadah' updates Passover story →
