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February 2008
Recent Posts
Excerpt: "Names on a Map," by Benjamin Alire Sáenz: Writers Garret goodies (including discount tickets) Sneak peek at Sunday book reviews "A Date Night With Crime" in Arlington A book award an editor can really get behind Categories
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Entertainment Blogs |
If you ever read The New York Review of Books, which Gore Vidal used to call The New York Review of Each Other's Books, you know one of its main values: The reviews are so long that you have no need to read the actual book. But I just came across an exception in the April 26 issue. It's novelist Charles Taylor's review of Jonathan Lear's Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. Most of the review focuses on Lear's treatment of the Crow tribe of the western United States. For the Crow, hunting and war were "the crucial activities around which excellence and honor revolved." In fact, hunting and war were the only activities that gave meaning to the Crow, and when the tribe was forced onto reservations, their lives literally ceased to have meaning and to make sense. Taylor contrasts the one-dimensional identity of the Crow with the infinite flexibility and mobility encouraged by modern Western societies, where everyone is encouraged to reinvent themselves at will. Have a long read here if you like. |
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