Critical Notes

July 4th. A relatively somber Independence Day this year, with escalating gas prices, soaring unemployment rates (and not a few newspaper book pages and staffers at risk), Midwestern floods and

NBCC board member Art Winslow on Ethan Canin’s “America, America:” “It seems but a minor stretch—if that—to speculate that the seemingly redundant title of Ethan Canin’s new novel, “America America,”

NBCC fiction finalist Aleksandar Hemon has a way cool website for his new novel, “The Lazarus Project”—bells, whistles, accordion, melodica, words from the novel, contemporary photographs by Sarajevo born Velibor

And upcoming in the New York Times Sunday Book Review: NBCC member William Logan on Frank O’Hara’s “Selected Poems,” can’t resist “LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!” NBCC member and first novelist

NBCC member Miriam Berkley, who has provided numerous 2007 NBCC award photos for Critical Mass (and the portrait of critic James Wood at left) noted here and here. Miriam tells

NBCC board member Marcela Valdes on Dagoberto Gilb’s The Flowers: “For years, award-winning novelist Dagoberto Gilb said he was working on a novel about his mother. The book, he told

Reports from Book Expo America filtering in, including a wrapup this morning by Scott Timberg in the Los Angeles Times here. “BookExpo has been getting less important,” City Lights executive

NBCC Balakian winner Wyatt Mason compiles a critical mass of critics —with 25 links to 25 critical essays published during the first three weeks of May 2008 to prove his

NBCC board member Eric Banks’s Derby pick in Men’s Vogue. Former NBCC board member Laura Miller on Christopher Benfey’s “A Summer of Hummingbirds” in the New York Times Book Review.