8 April 2011
Rodoreda, at death’s door, is philosophic: life may be a slow dying but death is unfailingly brutal. Cross the Iberian peninsula and there is the king of the philosophic novel, José Saramago, who died last year, writing one of his last books, Death With Interruptions. Here he is trying, with the great specter of his deceptively hilarious prose, to trick death. Yes, Mercè, he is saying, death is everywhere and immutable, but can she be seduced?
24 February 2011 | Philadelphia City Paper
In Derek Cianfrance’s recent film Blue Valentine, the short marriage of Dean and Cindy is coming undone. Dean is content with his life as a house painter; it’s the kind of job, he says, that allows a guy to have a beer in the morning.
24 October 2008
By trumping what appear to be long-held assumptions about self-identity, rapid urbanization engenders the cultural divide. It happened famously in the late 19th century in both Europe and North America—but also Japan.