Word: novelizations
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...Smith awakens our desires for greatness, then her latest novel (her third, after 2000’s name-making “White Teeth” and 2002’s lukewarm “The Autograph Man”) is a test of her ambition. “On Beauty” is an homage—Smith’s term—to E.M. Forster’s 1910 opus “Howards End,” a sweeping tale of two families at ideological war, one vehemently artistic and the other all business...
...carnality doesn’t redeem “On Beauty,” and her political message drowns out the story. Smith, like Howard, dwells on the theoretical, often for too long. In her ambition, she weighs down her novel with a little social commentary and a whole lot of rumination on the what it means to be black, and all the gradations thereof. There are the poseurs—like Levi, the youngest Belsey son, who hides an iPod under his class-erasing hoodie...
...feeling like you’ve just eaten a five-course meal. She tackles too much—affirmative action, aesthetics, and that thing called love—through the eyes of too many (five, in fact), each with back stories that would occupy the better part of a novel. In her desire to emulate Forster, Smith adheres too strictly to his plotline. What could have been inspiration is simply replication...
...growing up as the child of Vietnam-era parents in the farmland of upstate New York. In spite of this, both books share themes of violence, the legacy of parental neglect, and the power of personal expression to move people beyond their crushing circumstances. For a first-time graphic novel author, Shane White exhibits a remarkable talent for the form, delivering a shattering and memorable portrait of abuse and reconciliation...
...Media and the American Mind.” That week in class, we were discussing social class and its relation to taste, the subtle gradations of “high-brow” and “low-brow” entertainment. Our case study: trashy romance novels and the women who love them. Considering that the section met at 10 a.m., class participation was off the charts: everyone had a literate and informed opinion as to what disastrous effects Nora Roberts and Danielle Steele were wreaking upon modern society. But when the TF asked what...