February 2, 2002 marked the centenary of John Steinbeck's birth. Jim Dwyer writes about the great American writer's Irish Roots. ℘℘℘ All the great novels and stories of John Steinbeck slice into the American experience, clear to the bone. They are set in California, or along Route 66, where the Joads trekked across the Southwest from the Dust Bowls. And Steinbeck himself, born … [Read more...] about The Voice of the Dispossessed
Archive
Film Forum :
Troubles with Sunday
The epochal "Bloody Sunday" -- the massacre of thirteen unarmed Londonderry civilians by the British Army on January 30, 1972 -- is the stuff from which great drama could be drawn. The stories of the individuals caught up in the violence, the political machinations behind the scenes, the obscuring fog of lies and propaganda, and that day's transformation of Irish politics offer … [Read more...] about Film Forum :
Troubles with Sunday
Thomas Flanagan (1923-2003) Earned His Place in Irish Literature
By Seamus Heaney
On March 16, 2002, Thomas Flanagan reviewed a history of St. Patrick's day for The Irish Times and was identified by the paper's literary editor as "a novelist and scholar...currently working on a book about Irish-American writers." When he died in Berkeley from a heart attack five days later, he had submitted to The New York Book Review of Books his piece on William Kennedy … [Read more...] about Thomas Flanagan (1923-2003) Earned His Place in Irish Literature
The Cranberries :
Back On Track
Just like the old days. A new album (Wake Up and Smell the Coffee) from The Cranberries and the band are back on the road. May is pencilled in for the North American stretch of a world tour, beginning in Montreal and wrapping up in Miami before moving on to Mexico.
Just like the old days.
Almost.
While the tour will take a mammoth 18 months it's a far cry from the crazy … [Read more...] about The Cranberries :
Back On Track
Books: Roscoe
Roscoe – the latest book from Albany author William Kennedy – is a splendid novel: at once an exuberant elegy, a sad comedy, a realistic fable of life and death. In the seventh novel of Kennedy's "Albany cycle," the meshed subjects are the stuff of the real world, from politics to love, corruption to honor. But there is also room for a ghost story (the epitome of a unburied … [Read more...] about Books: Roscoe