By: Mark James
Article Category: Book Review
TORTILLA FLAT By John Steinbeck Penguin Classics; 208 pages; $13 John Steinbeck is one of a handful of American authors awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in the last century. He is perhaps best known for “The Grapes of Wrath,” and to a lesser extent, “Of Mice and Men.” While those novels are dramatic in nature, the lesser-known “Tortilla Flat” features a cast of lovable losers even Tom Joad could both laugh at and relate to. The novel revolves around a group... [Read more...]
By: Mark James
Article Category: Book Review
Open: An Autobiography By André Agassi Knopf: 400 pages; $28.95 It’s difficult to imagine what André Agassi hoped to accomplish in his recently published autobiography “Open.” He certainly made no friends, and may have alienated the few that he has. Agassi offers no substantial insight into the pro tennis tour, offering pure autobiographical fodder by focusing on the demons that tormented him. Not all of those are psychological though; some of his former opponents are fair game, and all the... [Read more...]
By: Mark James
Article Category: Book Review
The Humbling By Philip Roth Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 160 pages; $22 Doesn’t Philip Roth realize that retirement is part of the American dream? At the ripe old age of 76, he’s recently released “The Humbling,” his 30th book and eighth this century, and he has another due for publication in a few months. His latest is the story of an aging actor who has lost his ability — thus the humbling. Could this be Roth foretelling his own artistic demise? Can he be serious? The... [Read more...]
By: Mark James
Article Category: Book Review
Breath By Tim Winton 218 pages; Picador Press, 2008 ISBN-13: 978-0-312-42839-6 Taking breaths on a regular basis is a good thing, so it’s a little odd that Tim Winton’s novel “Breath” begins with a teenager who isn’t breathing at all. But Bruce “Pikelet” Pike, the paramedic first on the scene, recognizes what the boy has done, and that event sparks a reminiscence of his teenage years, a foreboding beginning to what’s billed as a coming-of-age story... [Read more...]
