by Bill Marx
“Writing in the Dark”
By David Grossman. Translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
Farrar, Straus Giroux, 131 pages, $18

Israeli novelist David Grossman fears his country is losing its soul.
In this stirring but slim collection essays on the intersection of politics and literature by celebrated Israeli novelist David (”See Under: Love,” “Her Body Knows”) [...]

By Gary Schwartz
One in so many Western works of art contains an image of a person we would call black. The phenomenon attracts relatively little attention in art history. The Menil Foundation went after it seriously, in a project now inherited by the Warburg Institute. An exhibition in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam offers a [...]

By Gary Schwartz
In 1942, in fulfillment of an essay competition announced in 1936, the Teyler’s Second Society in Haarlem published the winning study on the spread of Dutch painting throughout the world: Horst Gerson, “Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts” (The diffusion and after-effect of Dutch 17th-century painting). Written in German-occupied Holland [...]

by Bill Marx
I’m down in New York for PEN American’s annual Festival of International Literature, five days of readings, panels, and discussions on writing around the globe that emphasizes the plight of imperiled authors, particularly those that write in languages other than English.

Chinese dissident writer Ma Jian
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By Bill Marx

“Boston is adrift in the brave new competition among big American cities vying for tourist dollars.” Maureen Dezell, WBUR
Maureen made that charge back in July 2006 in an article that turned out to be one of the last posts on the late WBUR Arts Online. Now that the quote, along with a link [...]

By Peter Walsh

“But the trouble continued to spread over the country, and there were reports of big concerns, and even banks, in trouble.” — Upton Sinclair, Oil! (1927)
No doubt there are still those who think economics is a dull, plodding technical field, akin to accounting, which pale men in green eyeshades practice somewhere in the [...]

By Caldwell Titcomb
The most enterprising program offered by any of our local orchestras in years took place on February 23 when the New England Philharmonic presented a concert at Boston University’s Tsai Performance Center. Founded in 1976, the orchestra is composed of both professional and non-professional musicians, led by Richard Pittman. The evening offered music [...]

By Bill Marx
No play in the history of theater presents a deeper or more lacerating vision of the inhuman nuts and bolts of starvation, from the poetics of paucity to the politics of poverty, than Gerhart Hauptmann’s 1892 naturalistic masterpiece The Weavers. Based on fact – a riot by the horrifically oppressed weavers of Silesia [...]

By Caldwell Titcomb
There are many who claim that the Berlin Philharmonic is the greatest symphony orchestra in the world. Whether true or not, this formidable institution visited Boston’s Symphony Hall this week, led by Sir Simon Rattle (b. 1955). From 1980 to 1998 Rattle raised the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to the top rank, [...]

By Caldwell Titcomb
To mark the dedication of the New College Theatre at Harvard on October 17, a panel of four playwrights gathered to address the question “Does Playwriting Have a Future?” To allay suspense, the answer is yes (whew, that’s a relief).
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