Despite all the technological retrofitting, not to mention the recent gutting of hours and slashing of budgets, libraries remain one of our most inspiring institutions. Sometimes they even take the show on the road, as with this festival. For nearly a decade, the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library has brought together an esteemed … Read more
The name, French slang for a fake diamond, implies gaudiness, but this new French restaurant is nothing but elegance. Chef/owner Don Saunders crafts simple dishes with sumptuous details. Even the salads dazzle: Mixed greens are dressed with a light and toasty hazelnut vinaigrette; a steak salad is mobbed by crispy fried shallots. With the inclusion … Read more
God, we hope so. At least as far as we’re concerned. This sprawling book is a random collection of observations about women and men, women without men, women chasing men, women chased by men, and men who aren’t worth the chase, unless it’s to hunt them down and exterminate them. It’s wonderfully sarcastic, beautifully reported, … Read more
As a child, Galway Kinnell says, he was “shy to the point of being mutinous.” Today such a description might be applied to the adolescent writer of a brilliantly destructive computer virus. But Kinnell was born in 1927, which left him little choice but to become a poet. A highlight of his long career would … Read more
Early this year, the 1989 fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death, originally issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, was reaffirmed–and it’s not just an idle threat; more than fifty people around the world have been murdered because of connections to Rushdie. Nonetheless, the author occasionally risks a public appearance such as this one, at which he’ll read … Read more
Khaled Hosseini gets up at four every morning to write, before he heads off to work as an internist in a private medical practice. During those wee hours, the good doctor works to resuscitate the lost world of pre-Taliban Afghanistan. Hosseini, a diplomat’s son, left his homeland when he was twelve, and grew up in … Read more
We run in circles where people can get into rather heated discussions about prepositions and commas and such. Luckily, we also understand that these topics don’t exactly rock the coolness meter for most. That’s why Lynne Truss’s sassy grammar manual, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, caught our attention. It was … Read more
“Rug” is too humble a term for Maximo Laura’s works. If we encountered one of these woven beauties on the floor, we’d leap back and circle it as if it were electrified. Complex, colorful, and astonishingly detailed, they reward a lengthy consideration with surprises at every turn. Laura, a Peruvian, sets pre-Columbian iconography into modern … Read more
Beginning in 1947 and continuing until his death in 1965, Walter Inglis Anderson made regular twelve-mile trips from the Mississippi coast to a long barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico. He paddled solo in a small skiff, bringing along a few survival necessities and art supplies. On Horn Island, he lived out in the … Read more
The arresting work of this Guatemalan photographer recollects portraits of Native Americans that Edward S. Curtis captured during the twilight of their traditional tribal life. But Gonzalez Palma’s portraits of Mayan people in traditional dress only look historical. His keen eye for haunting expressions and arrangements, along with a distinctive Kodalith camera and gold-leaf printing … Read more