Ripped from the Headlines: Reality Cinema
First published in Dissent (Summer 2016) Hollywood has always had a strong appetite for fact yet a curiously lax attitude in channeling it. The typical biopic, ...
Author: Morris Dickstein
On the West bank: A New Israeli novel
First published in the Times Literary Supplement (Jan. 2, 2015) Among many obstacles to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the settlements establ...
Marshall Berman, 1940-2013
(My longtime friend Marshall Berman died suddenly on September 11, 2013, just a year ago today. To mark his yahrzeit I’m posting some remarks I made at a ...
My Cousin Harry
First published in Tablet (posted July 3, 2014) My cousin Harry Krug, who died early last year at 88, was related to me only by marriage but he couldn’t have be...
The Best of the Best?
First posted on NBCC Reads (October 29, 2013) So many of the finest works of the last 38 years have been nominated for the NBCC book awards that it’s almost imp...
My Life in Fiction
First published in The Threepenny Review (Fall 2013) Novels demand a projection of self that varies with your moods and seasons, the stages of your life. Readin...
Joseph Frank and the Unknown Dostoevsky
As a tribute to the late Joseph Frank (1918-2013), I reprint my review, slightly updated here, of the first volume of his great biography of Dostoevsky, which f...
Becoming Gore Vidal
First posted in The Daily Beast (August 4, 2012) Gore Vidal liked to style himself a populist but for his political leanings this hardly fit tha man at all. Pop...
The Great Contrarian – Dwight Macdonald
First published in The East Hampton Star (July 19, 2012) Masscult and Midcult (New York Review Books, $16.95) gives us only one phase of Dwight Macdonald’s stor...
Looking Back at the French New Wave
First posted in The Cine-files (May 28, 2012) At a time when movies seem more mass-produced than ever, we have every reason to wax nostalgic about the French N...