Articles by Lydia Kiesling
August 13, 2010
Modern Library Revue: #58 The Age of Innocence 3
Were Ellen Olenska on Jersey Shore, she would be the pasty, sober blonde in a ruffled one-piece.
July 16, 2010
At the Movies with David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet 10
It’s hard for me not to imagine a reviewer in a nightcap with a hot cocoa and a Mitchell novel. He wiggles his toes at the pleasure of good fiction and thinks to himself, “This is a wow. You know who else was a wow?”
May 26, 2010
Modern Library Revue: #62 From Here to Eternity 2
Seven hundred pages is, at best, a dear friend and at worst, a co-worker, the kind who sends you political forwards.
May 19, 2010
Modern Library Revue: #71 A High Wind in Jamaica 11
I want not to resort to the repellent vernacular of the internet meme, but my reaction to the book is difficult to express otherwise, so, Wow. Just….wow.
April 27, 2010
Telling the Truth in Vietnam: The Spy Who Loved Us by Thomas Bass 2
The thrust of the Thomas Bass’s book as I read it is that Pham Xuan An was a purveyor of truths, as a spy and a journalist. If journalism can be said to change the course of human events, An worked in two opposing ways to end the war, one directly, with a clear national objective, and the other obliquely, by reporting the ugly facts to the world outside.
March 31, 2010
Modern Library Revue: #67 Heart of Darkness 13
“White man oppresses black man, is oppressed in turn by jungle mysteries.”
