Inquirer Book Critic - Carlin Romano http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/carlin_romano RSS Feed for Inq Col Carlin Romano en-us Sun, 09 Nov 2008 08:01:00 GMT Morrison doesn't rest on her Nobel laurels http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/carlin_romano/20081109_Morrison_doesn_t_rest_on_her_Nobel_laurels.html Old Nobel literature laureates die and sometimes fade away, but first they typically keep publishing amid an odd atmosphere that combines imperial hauteur and cloying deference. Whole lives summed up wittily and succinctly http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/carlin_romano/20081104_Whole_lives_summed_up_wittily_and_succinctly.html Can good writers write short? C'mon - can fish swim? Example: Not Quite What I Was Planning. It's a collection of six-word memoirs. The 'Obama of Italy' - who lost one http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/carlin_romano/20081102_The_Obama_of_Italy_-_who_lost_one.html NEW YORK - He's a highly intellectual, extremely confident, smoothly articulate politician who grew up without a father, then wrote a best-selling book about it. In literary studies, a culture-war armistice http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/carlin_romano/20081029_In_literary_studies__a_culture-war_armistice.html The culture wars are so over. At least, some folks say, that's the situation in literary studies, which could be a harbinger for the nation. Tireless champion of reviving Hebrew http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/carlin_romano/20081028_Tireless_champion_of_reviving_Hebrew.html Theodor Herzl, the Hungarian-born journalist who shaped Zionism into the force that created modern Israel, imagined German would be the working language of his hoped-for state. A mirror of Eastern Europe http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/carlin_romano/20081026_A_mirror_of_Eastern_Europe.html For Czech novelist Milan Kundera, now approaching the magic age of 80, at which eminent authors often find themselves lauded by the literary world, the last two weeks might seem a series of twists on the already tricky titles of his books. Fooling with a classic http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/carlin_romano/20081019_Fooling_with_a_classic.html Poor Anna K. She "frittered her twenties away, dating schmucks who were always leaving the country, men who could barely pay for themselves, who wore frayed T-shirts to fancy restaurants." 'Jewel' isn't as incendiary as furor might indicate http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/carlin_romano/20081016__Jewel__isn_t_as_incendiary_as_furor_might_indicate.html The Jewel of Medina, Sherry Jones' hot-potato novel about the Prophet Muhammad and his child-bride, Aisha, comes not from a field of spuds, but a Mideast quarry some consider bedrock-hard in its historical clarity, others soft and uncertain. Into the 'new Italy' http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/carlin_romano/20081012_Into_the__new_Italy_.html In decades past, a kind of honorary chair existed in American publishing for a "great" Italian writer - one only, please - through whom tasteful American readers could satisfy their need for la vita Italiana, dolce and otherwise. Frenchman Le Clezio wins literature Nobel http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/carlin_romano/20081010_Frenchman_Le_Clezio_wins_literature_Nobel.html Only two weeks after Swedish Academy secretary Horace Engdahl chastised American literature as "too insular" to rise to Nobel Prize status, the academy yesterday awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for literature to French novelist and essayist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio.