Coming out of the pandemic, one could be forgiven for not wanting to dive into a novel set during that not-so distant past. Hari Kunzru’s Blue Ruin, however, vividly captures the anxiety of a world in quarantine while simultaneously offering a riveting glimpse into the lives of artists struggling to survive. Jay, the protagonist of Blue Ruin (Knopf; $28), is a former artist who finds himself delivering groceries to the wealthy in upstate New York. After contracting COVID-19, his hard-hearted New York City landlord casts him out of his apartment. It is under these circumstances that he makes a delivery […]

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There’s some grainy footage of a 1966 performance by Joni Mitchell on a show called “Let’s Sing Out” for students at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. When you first see Mitchell, she looks like “girl singer’’ furniture, a la Mary Travers, as the trio she’s playing with motor through a painfully corny tune that could be an outtake from A Mighty Wind, the documentary spoof about a folk music reunion concert. But wait. When Mitchell steps forward to sing her deeply autobiographical tune, “Urge for Going,’’ you feel a collective breath going out, not just from the audience but from […]

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Hunger is a need. Desire is a need stylized, like hunger filtered through the imagination. But where hunger feeds function, desire seeks expression. Ever since Montaigne invented the form, great essays revel in their attempt to express desires and their ability to articulate the revelatory. Accordingly, great essays become food for the imagination. And a well-fed imagination, it follows, is good for all.   Full of verve, wit, and no shortage of voluble passion, Becca Rothfeld’s debut collection of essays, All Things Are Too Small (Metropolitan Books; $27.99), investigates today’s conditions of love and desire and suggests what it might take […]

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There couldn’t be a better title for the latest book by Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees (Ecco; $26.99). This account by the author of the popular essay collection World of Wonders serves vivid, heartfelt vignettes about food and four generations of family—from her grandparents and parents to her children who devour the often distinct and wonderful fruits that their mother puts on the table with panache. Nezhukumatathil’s children may not know or remember that “jamborees” are defined as boisterous celebrations; aptly, the word has no known origin. She writes that her favorite fruit is the jackfruit, which […]

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Tits are back, baby. “Breasts,” a show of tits throughout the ages, just opened at the ACP Palazzo Franchetti in Venice for the Biennale. This comes on the heels of “Darker, Lighter, Puffy, Flat” at the Kunsthalle Wein, which examined the significance of breasts, from the maternal to the sexual to the biological. Last year, there was also “Boobs in Art” at Berlin’s DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM, a comprehensive exhibition of 100 artists grappling with mammary glands that included a painting by Paula Modersohn-Becker from 1906, considered the first self-depicted nude by a woman. Sarah Thornton’s new book, Tits Up: What […]

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