Anthony Domestico
@tonydomestico.bsky.social
Critic and associate professor of literature at Purchase College, SUNY
My July column for @commonwealmagazine.org on Harriet Clark's debut novel "The Hill" www.commonwealmagazine.org/domestico-ju...
Released from Countdowns
Harriet Clark's debut novel is in explicit conversation with Marilynne Robinson's 'Housekeeping.' Remarkably, it stands up to the comparison.
commonwealmagazine.org
"He bore, like an oriflamme, his elaborate name - 'Goldsborough!' he would announce, holding out a comradely hand when meeting a new acquaintance: no one escaped." - Anita Brookner, "Lewis Percy"
In the last quarter of the 20th century, provocative art came to be leveraged for right-wing political power. We're still dealing with the consequences. @mathitak.bsky.social on @isaacbutler.bsky.social's 'The Perfect Moment':
The Culture-War Factory
In the last quarter of the 20th century, provocative art came to be leveraged for right-wing political power. We're still dealing with the consequences.
commonwealmagazine.org
"There was a pall over the 1980s; the whole decade felt like late afternoon in late fall, ominously dark too soon." - Kate Riley, "Ruth"
"As a young man, his was a nearly worrying calm, but young brothers had done much worse than declining to exit the passive voice." - Kate Riley, "Ruth"
Starting in September, I’m teaching a year-long series of online classes on Henry James. You can take them individually or as a sequence. I’d love for you to join us. Scholarships are available. All the details are here: garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/why-we-lov...
I wrote about James Ellroy's deranged vision of the American soul for @bookpostusa.bsky.social books.substack.com/p/review-ant...
Review: Anthony Domestico on James Ellroy
He pokes at the underbelly of American history, and a putrid stench wafts up.
books.substack.com
Check out the NYRB US cover for Library of Brothel You can preorder here bookshop.org/p/books/libr... or from @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social or any local bookseller
A few months late, I wrote on Ben Lerner's "Transcription" for @commonwealmagazine.org www.commonwealmagazine.org/domestico-le...
Caught on the Hinge
To read Ben Lerner's 'Transcription' is to feel wobbles and flickers all around you.
commonwealmagazine.org
"For their present life was the apotheosis of everything that pertained to indoors, and the seasons would revolve without their being much disturbed." - Anita Brookner, "A Friend from England"
I talked — at length! — with Julian Lucas of the New Yorker and this is what happened: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Colson Whitehead’s Big Score
As he closes out his Harlem crime trilogy with “Cool Machine,” the two-time Pulitzer winner turns again to the city that made him, and to the private ghosts behind his restless reinventions.
newyorker.com
Raphael is often an afterthought to artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti, writes @griffino.bsky.social. But, as a landmark show at the Met reveals, his work deserves a second—as well as a third, fourth, and fifth—viewing.
Down to Earth
Raphael's art places us at the precise point where humanity and divinity converge.
commonwealmagazine.org
Great conversation between Christopher Beha and Matthew Boudway (@boudway.bsky.social) about religious belief, personal experience, intellectual history, and the novel form for the @commonwealmagazine.org podcast. www.commonwealmagazine.org/podcast/cohe...
‘A Coherent Picture of Reality’
Raised Catholic, Christopher Beha became a committed atheist and left religion behind. Here, he tells what led him back.
commonwealmagazine.org
"Sometimes my voice broke on a high note but I sang on, for those songs said better than I could the emptiness and longing of my life." - Anita Brookner, "Brief Lives"
"Nothing one could say of Father Vaillant explained him." - Willa Cather, "Death Comes for the Archbishop"
"The great tables of granite set down in an empty plain were inconceivable without their attendant clouds, which were a part of them, as the smoke is part of the censor, or the foam of the wave." - Willa Cather, "Death Comes for the Archbishop"
"She was not a very nice woman, but then neither am I." - Anita Brookner, "Brief Lives"
"When he was not at work, or being actively amused, he went to sleep. He had no twilight stage. But now he enjoyed this half-awake loafing with his brain as if it were a new sense, arriving late, like wisdom teeth." - Willa Cather, "The Professor's House"
"Humanism did indeed concentrate on this world, but usually in tandem with the unseen other. The task of painters was to visualize both." @griffino.bsky.social on "Raphael: Sublime Poetry" at the Met for @commonwealmagazine.org www.commonwealmagazine.org/oleynick-rap...
Down to Earth
Raphael's art places us at the precise point where humanity and divinity converge.
commonwealmagazine.org
One of my favorite writers, @calebcrain.bsky.social, on a very good friend's very good book. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Looking Back at Lewis and Clark
The explorers’ crossing of the continent is America’s most famous camping trip. What was it all for?
newyorker.com
Tonight. Topics could include: Satyajit Ray & Ritwik Ghatak; national literatures; modernism is India; where Neil Diamond lived in Brooklyn; more.
Mark Krotov@markkrotov.bsky.social · 3mo agoReally looking forward to speaking to the great Amit Chaudhuri at Rizzoli Bookstore on May 21! Reading and rereading his many @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social books in preparation. www.nyrb.com/blogs/events...
Print galleys of OBJECTS OF DESIRE by Adam O'Fallon Price are now available! Winner of the Autumn House Press Fiction Prize, Adam’s unflinchingly honest and deliciously existential stories explore the ways our deepest hunger teases us toward both our best selves.
"It all comes down to this, my dear: one likes the florid style, or one doesn't." - Willa Cather, "The Professor's House"
"He had found that you can train the mind to be active at a fixed time, just as the stomach is trained to be hungry at certain hours of the day." - Willa Cather, "The Professor's House"
What drew so many great British writers and artists to Catholicism in the early twentieth century? @tonydomestico.bsky.social reviews Melanie McDonagh's new book on England's mad rush to Rome:
‘The Real Thing’
Among twentieth-century British artists, there seemed to be a mad rush to Rome. A new book endeavors to explain this explosion in Catholic conversions.
commonwealmagazine.org
Next week! What an honor to give this series of lectures named in honor of Barbara Packer, one of the all-time great scholars of the Transcendentalists.
Not sure I've ever bought a book so fast as I just bought Heaven and Hell after reading Joy Williams's piece on it for @bookpostusa.bsky.social books.substack.com/p/review-joy...
Review: Joy Williams on Jón Kalman Stefánsson
A perfect little novel
books.substack.com
"He did not answer, but rolled on me a dark brown eye shining like a fried egg when it is not quite cooked." - Rebecca West, "The Fountain Overflows"
