Month: May 2003

Eustace Conway is self-sufficient in ways most of us wouldn’t want to be even if we knew how, in the way almost no American has been since the days of Daniel Boone. The star of Gilbert’s marvelous nonfiction The Last American Man lives on a thousand-acre patch of woods in Appalachia, literally living off the…

When Kurt Cobain killed himself in 1994, Paul McComas was as shocked as anyone that the man voted most likely to be the voice of his generation would choose eternal silence instead. Unlike the rest of us, McComas actually did something about it. Himself a lifetime victim of depression, the Chicago writer devoted himself to…

Let’s not kid ourselves. Erica Jong’s reputation and following were built on her frank depictions of sex—going all the way back to her debut in 1973, Fear of Flying. She still relies on that old trick, even as she indulges in the chic literary trend of the day, the historic novel. In Sappho’s Leap, Jong…

If you only know these three novels by their Hollywood adaptations—well, then you’re not doing half bad, considering that they’d all rank high in just about anybody’s list of the top-ten all-time noir films. But the originals themselves are among the very best in his genre—however it is you define it. Despite Cain’s sainted place…

If your twin brother died in an accident that was probably your fault, and your father turned the incident into a farcical stage play that was the hit of the season, you’d probably have some issues about that. Angsty teen Judith Shakespeare is aghast when she runs across a draft of Twelfth Night, and hatches…

As a chronicler of the American West, Larry McMurtry has few rivals. He combines a gift for characterization with a sense of history’s sweep that makes his best work, like the Pulitzer winner Lonesome Dove, succeed as both regional saga and small-scale story of imperfect people in search of emotional connection. Wandering Hill picks up…