My Salinger Year is an entertaining film. In this coming-of-age story, a young poet is hired at a literary agency that represents J. D. Salinger.  Her job is to shred unread letters from the author’s fans, but after scanning a heartfelt few, she decides to answer them. The plot unr

In a democracy, the tension between order and freedom is always at work.  To keep the current playing field even, Congressional Democrats have submitted a bill to expand the U. S. Supreme Court from 9 to 13 members.  They feel today’s jurists are too conservative for a society tha

Recently, someone posted a remark by playwright Harold Pinter on Facebook.  It read, “How can you write a happy play? Drama is about conflict and general degrees of perturbation, disarray. I’ve never been able to write a happy play…”  I did a thesis on Pinter when I was

Film critic Jason De Rosso makes a telling observation when he writes about the film, Phantom Thread, presumably the swan song of acclaimed actor, Daniel Day Lewis. “Maybe it’s because Phantom Thread comes close to landing flat on its face that it ends up such a breathtaking e

“You mustn’t be so open-mined that your brains fall out.” That’s the advice avant garde poet, Marianne Moore once gave to her fellow poet, E. E. Cummings. Whether she had any influence over him or not is unknown but a new biography of the man reveals he was clear about his opi

After spending an August afternoon shopping with her granddaughter for back to school clothes, a friend sent me an email saying that all the child talked about was her determination not to be a chatterbox in the coming year.  A month has passed since that conversation and I’m wonde

“Any species that is wholly contented, perfectly adapted to its environment, runs a real risk of its extinction.” So begins Walter Kerr, theater critic, lyricist and Broadway director of several successful productions, in his 1962 publication, The Decline of Pleasure. (Paperback e