The Princess of 72nd Street is a historical novel, first published in 1979 and very much of its time, which I remember as a period of open confusion. What followed may not have been much of an improvement for many people, but it was relatively straightforward, and things have only gotten more straightforward since; today, alas, …
Continue reading ‘The Princess of 72nd Street
by Elaine Kraf’ »
Near the end of Cities on a Hill, her historically weighted report on four “visionary” communities in 1980s American (The Castro in San Francisco, Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church in Virginia, Sun City Center in Florida, and Rajneeshpuram, Oregon), Frances Fitzgerald writes, Sydney Mead, the great authority on the American Protestant tradition, wrote in The …
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve re-read two novels about widows — and, for the first time, as a widower myself. One of them is probably more familiar as a film, starring Joan Plowright and Rupert Friend. The other happens to be the novel that ties for My Most Favorite with Jane Austen’s Emma. …
Every now and then, I am arrested, in the course of reading, by a sharp sliver of poetry. My mind refuses to go on until every shred of meaning and delight has been tasted. This recently happened in a re-reading of Penelope Fitzgerald’s Innocence, a novel that compares, in its blend of smiles and foolishness, …