Articles by J.P. Smith
October 7, 2010
The Edge of Life: Dying by René Belletto 1
To Belletto this all comes naturally. The ease with which he shifts between genres—whether they be straightforward thriller, detective story, spy tale, or the blisters and flames of a thwarted romance—is breathtaking and highly entertaining.
July 22, 2010
Reading in Tongues 4
Where that translator emphasized, or rather extracted and highlighted, the poetic and romantic side of Proust, reading him in French showed just how muscular, how sinewy, Proust’s prose truly is.
June 9, 2010
The Trick of It 4
Childhood and adolescence are the great gateway experiences to adulthood, middle-age, the so-called golden years, and then decrepitude. All that, waiting to be unpacked. By that time it’s too big for a backpack. We’re talking about a whole civilization you’ve buried in your backyard.
May 21, 2010
Death in Venice? Don’t Look Now 5
A movie possesses a literalness that a truly good piece of fiction doesn’t, or shouldn’t. Because we can’t, in the first instance, flip back to an earlier scene, and because it’s presumed that we’re seeing this movie for the first time at the cinema, we experience it as one continuous unspooling of narration.
