UPDATED (at end): Since the death of J.D. Salinger, there’s been scads of comment declaring his books as life-changers (or not) and plenty of speculation on what waits in his safe to be published or what might be made into a movie and even some of that personal, David Copperfield kind…

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What is it that’’s invisible” in Paul Auster’s latest novel? It’s not the truth. The truth is there… somewhere … though choosing it from all the various claims and denials batted around by three different narrators and one or two other characters might be an impossible task. Or maybe it’s…

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Like much of Nick Hornby’s work, Juliet, Naked is not a book about love in the traditional sense. It’s a book for those of us who are obsessively in love with music, so much in love that it defines us when so little else does. We identify with someone’s art, and…

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There’s a comic quality and grounds for parody in even the most classic literature. In Masterpiece Comics, R. Sikoryak proves himself  adept at discovering and exploiting these  cartoonish characteristics. But while the laughs in his collection are literate, what he parodies are the comics, everything from  Peanuts to Superman.

Masterpiece Comics would be a one-joke…

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It’s fitting–or maybe ironic– that Fahrenheit 451,  favorite of high school librarians everywhere, has been turned into a graphic novel. About half-way through Ray Bradbury’s familiar story of a world where books are put to the torch, Fire Captain Beatty tells the story’s wavering central character, Guy Montag, how books…

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The Rabbit’s  March Hare personae means he’s still waiting for his copy of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice (tomorrow! tomorrow!).  In the meantime, we’re reading the reviews. As usual, novelist/reviewer Walter Kirn shines a light. He’s an admirer. Even Salon’s Laura Miller, who so hated Against the Day, finds the latest to…

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The Rabbit thought he’d caught a superhero–book jacket designer and author Chip Kidd– in a contradiction. In a recent interview for the New York Times‘ “The Moment” blog, Kidd discusses how the cover he designed for The Dark Knight Returns can be seen in any comic book store “instantly at 200…

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Reading William Faulkner’s The Bear on a five-day backpacking trip into the Montana high country reveals what we fear, what we love and what we’ve lost of wild country.

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Even when we like them, we don’t always admire the characters in Walter Mosley’s fiction. Ben Dibbuk is no exception. A former hard-drinking, skirt-chasing angry young man, Ben has fallen into a rut thanks to a regular job and a 20 year marriage. It’s as if his soul has been…

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