AltWeeklies Wire
The Clinician and the Poet in Kay Redfield Jamison Harmonize in 'Nothing Was the Same'new
This is a slim yet profound book, unadorned by fatuous spirituality, by a writer eager neither to conceal nor exaggerate her feelings. It gives grieving its complete due, and at the same time there's nothing at all depressing about it.
Metro Silicon Valley |
Richard von Busack |
10-15-2009 |
Nonfiction
'Shooting War' Does Have a Pointnew
While critiquing the self-importance of the blogosphere, Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman's graphic novel Shooting War perpetrates some of the sphere's worst customs: the self-importance, the self-pity, the lazy writing.
Metro Silicon Valley |
Richard von Busack |
12-13-2007 |
Fiction
Spalding Weaves Herself Into Crime Narrativenew
Every bit as fraught as its title, Linda Spalding's Who Named the Knife is a glassine web of Didionesque passive sentences, re-creating a crime in Hawaii in 1978.
Metro Silicon Valley |
Richard von Busack |
12-06-2007 |
Nonfiction
'The Sabotage Cafe': A Falling-Down Lifenew
This debut novel by New York's Joshua Furst, which is insider enough to name-check Cometbus, is probably the best book about the agony of being a gutter punk.
Metro Silicon Valley |
Richard von Busack |
11-01-2007 |
Fiction
'My Brother's Madness' is a Heart's-Blood Memoirnew
Pines is a good writer, a dedicated brother and a Brooklyn-bred humorist.
Metro Silicon Valley |
Richard von Busack |
10-18-2007 |
Nonfiction
'The Trap' is Shrewd and Compassionatenew
It's also unique, because it comes not from a sorrowing elder but rather from a young person with a very conservative agenda -- conservative in the sense that he wants to retrieve the gains of the New Deal.
Metro Silicon Valley |
Richard von Busack |
07-26-2007 |
Nonfiction
Inside the Life of Charlotte Greenwoodnew
This sympathetic biographer makes a very convincing case that Greenwood was more than just a comedy spinster type.
Metro Silicon Valley |
Richard von Busack |
07-18-2007 |
Nonfiction
