Last night Sherman Alexie beat Lorrie Moore and Barbara Kingsolver. And people applauded as he did so. A shonda? No, just the shortlist at the presentation of the PEN/Faulkner award for fiction on March 23. Alexie, the Native American writer, won for “War Dances.” Lorrie Moore lost for “A Gate at the Stairs” and Barbara…
The iPad is a fox. In his book about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Sir Isaiah Berlin famously quoted a fragment of Archilochus who distinguishes between fox and hedgehog: “The fox knows many little things. The hedgehog knows one big thing.” The former (like Tolstoy) were cunning whereas the latter (Dostoevsky) were utterly effective. Both had their…
For the past few months I’ve been getting email blasts several times a day from someone named Dan Friedman (no connection to the Forward’s arts & culture editor), ultra-right email posts with short, pithy barbs aimed at Obama (whom he calls BHO), liberals and the Israeli peace camp. He’s pretty far over the line, but…
Ever longer grows the list of newspapers whose print editions are closed, closing or in imminent danger. But while the chances of getting newsprint on your fingers from any of the Rocky Mountain News, New Haven Register, Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Daily News, Minneapolis Star Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Tucson…
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