Critical Notes

In Other News 3

By NBCC


Former NBCC finalist James Wood looks at fugitive lives and their aftermath in two new novels by Hari Kunzru and Peter Carey (pictured left).

Also at the New Yorker, former NBCC finalist Alma Guillermoprieto thinks about Fidel Castro’s good-bye.

Over at the Brooklyn Rail, Jed Lipinski talks to former NBCC finalist Geoff Dyer about music, Thomas Bernhard, and how work protects him from disappointing cappuccinos and other unhappinesses.

Nation publisher Victor Navasky takes a look at Anthony Lewis’ claim that, “[d]espite the Bush Administration’s much-publicized assault on First Amendment values, ‘I am convinced, that the fundamental American commitment to free speech, is no longer in doubt.’

Former NBCC finalist Chris Hedges warns that the reason the ‘troop surge’ is winning in Iraq is because the U.S. is “currently spending hundreds of millions of dollars to pay the monthly salaries of some 600,000 armed fighters in the three rival ethnic camps in Iraq.”

Rae Armantrout, whose Next Life turned up on the NBCC’s first best recommended list, does a little poetic algebra.

Boyd Tonkin explores the psychological landscape of novels by NBCC winner Cormac McCarthy.

Lindy Burleigh reviews the latest novel by the amazingly prolific Jose Saramago.

Board member Rigoberto Gonzalez tips readers off to a new poetry publisher of chapbooks.

Joe Queenan looks at the Beowulf we hardly knew.

And in LA, Duttons bookshelf runs out, and NBCC member Carolyn Kellogg joins the blogging brigade a the Times.