The Real Star of M*A*S*H
A personal tribute to the overlooked genius of writer W.C. Heinz.
Kevin Mims
· 13 min read
Books
A collection of 274 posts
Two Hundred Years of Stendhal
2022 marks the bicentennial of the pseudonym’s transformation from literary dabbler into one of the greatest novelists of the modern age.
Robert Zaretsky
· 11 min read
Napoleon in Rags
Jann Wenner’s attempt to set the record straight only confirms the unattractive picture painted by his critics.
David S. Wills
· 13 min read
Getting Fletch Wrong
Jon Hamm’s portrayal is an improvement on Chevy Chase’s goofball routine, but still bears little relation to the amoral cad in Gregory McDonald’s novels.
Kevin Mims
· 16 min read
Peter Straub, 1943–2022
Farewell to another of the Big Six novelists from the Golden Age of American horror fiction.
Kevin Mims
· 13 min read
Go Ask Beatrice: Notes on a Dishonest Decade
An outstanding new book tells the story of a wildly successful literary hoax. But it was just one of many.
Kevin Mims
· 29 min read
The Delia Demolition
Why is the Atlantic slinging mud at the 72-year-old author of ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ on the eve of the film’s release?
Kevin Mims
· 19 min read
Céline, Literary Antichrist
If we demand that our artists be angels, we will not have any art left to appreciate.
RJ Smith
· 9 min read
Has Olivia Manning’s ‘Fortunes of War’ Finally Found Its Moment?
The Ukrainian war has made Manning’s writing more relevant now than at any time since it was written.
Robin Ashenden
· 11 min read
Roya Hakakian and How to Speak About What No One Wants to Hear
The combined threats against Roya Hakakian and Masih Alinejad suggest a broader policy of violence and intimidation on the part of the Islamic Republic and its operatives in the United States.
Paul Berman
· 35 min read
Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style Revisited
Hofstadter argued that McCarthyism was simply the latest iteration of a longstanding American tradition.
Michael J. Totten
· 8 min read
Get Ready for the Return of the Abortion Novel
The abortion novels that proliferated in the late 1960s were filled with characters who are forced by carelessness and circumstance to make the most agonizing of personal choices.
Kevin Mims
· 26 min read
The Western Reinvented. Again.
It has been 30 years since a Western last won the Best Picture Oscar at the Academy Awards. That was in 1992 and the film was Unforgiven, directed by Clint Eastwood, who also starred in it alongside Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman, and Richard Harris. On Sunday, Jane Campion’s The
Kevin Mims
· 9 min read
Heading Into the Atom Age—Pat Frank’s Perpetually Relevant Novels
NOTE: The following essay contains spoilers. British journalist Ed West recently published an excellent essay entitled “Children of Men Is Really Happening,” in which he tied together the shrinking fertility rate wreaking demographic havoc across the globe and the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, which is also wreaking havoc across
Kevin Mims
· 11 min read
Against De-Materialization: Tom Wolfe in the Age of NFTs
You cannot lose, you cannot win: the present includes the past and the future. ~Marshall McLuhan I In the summer of 1970, TV-Ontario filmed Tom Wolfe in conversation with Marshall McLuhan on the lawn of McLuhan’s home in Toronto’s Wychwood Park. Towards the end of their amicable chat,
Julia Friedman, David Hawkes
· 15 min read