A Stone Unturned
Someone once described Graham Greene as the novelist of decolonizing Britain. England during and after the war and the imperial fall was his true subject, the uncut stone from which he chiseled his themes. Think of knob-kneed, lonely-hearted Wilson, the…
Excursions in the Real World
THE STORY OF LUCY GAULT. By William Trevor. Viking. 227 pp. $24.95. Why is so much fiction written in our language and why is so much of what is written of so little consequence? The novels come and go as…
JAPAN: AN INTERPRETATION
THE DONALD RICHIE READER: 50 Years of Writing on Japan. By Donald Richie. Compiled and edited by Arturo Silva. Stone Bridge. 238 pp. $29.95 with case. Paper $19.95. Those inscrutable Japanese. They’ve inspired more trash between hard covers over the…
`Manifest Duplicity’
BLOWBACK: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. By Chalmers Johnson. Metropolitan. 268 pp. $26. Some Sundays back, the New York Times fronted a story from its Paris correspondent, Suzanne Daley, about the fear and loathing Americans induce among Europeans…
Letter from Iran
In a gritty neighborhood of South Teheran not long ago, Iran’s animated opposition movement gathered at a mosque to mark a grim occasion. It was November 23, 2000 a year since state security agents assassinated Dariush Foruhar, the longtime leader…
‘Our’ Gide?
This article focuses on the books “Gore Vidal: A Biography,” by Fred Kaplan and “Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking. Collected Sex Writings,” edited by Donald Weise. These books are biographies of Gore Vidal. Vidal’s life was that fought between the public…
Harnessing the Rising Sun
EMBRACING DEFEAT: Japan in the Wake of World War II. By John W. Dower. Norton/New Press. 676 pp. $29.95. TOKYO UNDERWORLD: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan. By Robert Whiting. Pantheon. 372 pp. $27.50….
Globalism’s Pen Pal
The article focuses on the book “The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization,” by Thomas L. Friedman. Friedman is a globalist and a futurist and a techie true believer, but he thinks people should be separated according to race,…
What Memoir Forgets
The article focuses on the genre of memoirs in literature. Memoirs is reality based literature. It represents the democratization of the written word. The only encouraging thing about the phenomenon is the number of people who suspect it. This indicates…
The Closed Shop
The article comments on legal procedures of Japan. In 1997 Japan’s Supreme Court handed down a startling decision after more than three decades of legal warfare over the Education Ministry’s censors. Japan has an independent judiciary in name only– one…
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