John Baker’s Blog

This from PEN World Voices: Rushdie, Eco, and Vargas Llosa by Dorothy W. at Metaxu Cafe:
Then Lopate asked a couple questions solicited on index cards from the audience; the first question, asking the writers to describe their writing methods, got only boos from the audience because of its banality, and I was delighted to see [...]

The German film, The Lives of Others has been released as a DVD. Paul Cantor has an extensive review of it in Christianity Today, claiming it to be the best feature film début by a director since Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. My own review is here.
*
Do read Alex Witchel’s piece in The New York Times. [...]

In The Fragrant City, where I was born, I’m nothing until I can speak English. This wasn’t the case for my father or his father, or for any of my ancestors going back more than 12,000 years. They were who they were. But for me and my brothers we are what we do.
They are similar, [...]

Gerd is front of house. A taught and wired transvestite with an acrobatic mouth, there is something Scandinavian about her but you couldn’t say what. She is wearing a pinstripe suit with tiny two-tone black and white patent shoes. Swiss cotton shirt with a slim tie knotted Windsor style.
Henri has cooked a goose and we [...]