john freeman

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Denis Johnson’s war

Denis Johnson has given us so many maimed and suffering souls in the past 25 years, he could fill a trauma ward.
Vietnam in Tree of Smoke
By JOHN FREEMAN | November 06, 2007

American dreamer

It’s difficult to think of an American writer with a story more inspiring than Ha Jin’s.
Ha Jin retraces his journey
By JOHN FREEMAN | October 15, 2007

The cast of Bridge of Sighs — Russo’s first novel since his 2001 Pulitzer winner, Empire Falls — may have benefitted from a refresher course with Emerson.
Richard Russo’s family tidings
By JOHN FREEMAN | September 26, 2007

Stage worthies

The roar of the greasepaint precedes that of the autumn wind this year.
Fall on the Boston boards
By CAROLYN CLAY | September 12, 2007

Singles scene

It’s old news: this series of tubes they call the Internet has revolutionized the way music is distributed.
Local bands dig in with digital
By WILL SPITZ | September 12, 2007

Trane, Joyce Dee Dee, Sco, and more

The official kickoff to the season begins with the week of activities celebrating the 30th anniversary of the John Coltrane Memorial Concert.
A jam-packed season of jazz
By JON GARELICK | September 12, 2007

World music

There’s more to Boston’s classical music scene than the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
The BSO goes traveling, and Berlin comes to Boston
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | September 12, 2007

Bounty

It’s payback time for Boston’s blues and roots music scene.
The best of the season’s roots, world, folk, and blues
By TED DROZDOWSKI | September 12, 2007

Basstown nights

If 2006 was the year Boston germinated, 2007 is the year it grows up.
The new scene emerges; Halloween preparations
By DAVID DAY | September 12, 2007

BBC America?

The British are coming! And they have American accents!
The networks put some English on the fall TV season
By JOYCE MILLMAN | September 12, 2007

Busy busy

“If you pulled the cord and the chute didn’t open, how would you dance on the way down?”
Something for everyone
By DEBRA CASH | September 12, 2007

Turn on the bright lights

Art this fall grapples with issues like gender and journalism, personal space and human survival, and what to have for lunch.
Art, women, politics, and food
By RANDI HOPKINS | September 12, 2007

Locked and loaded

Okay, this is getting ridiculous. It’s already been a strong year for games, with four — four ! — game-of-the-year contenders before Labor Day.
The fall promises a double-barreled blast of gaming greatness
By MITCH KRPATA | September 12, 2007

War, peace, and Robert Pinsky

Every few years, a fall publishing season emerges that should remind us that Boston could be the literary epicenter of America.
The season's fiction, non-fiction, and poetry
By JOHN FREEMAN | September 12, 2007

Happy endings

The end is nigh! And I’m not talking about the mortgage market.
Bad news begets good tunes
By MATT ASHARE | September 12, 2007

War zones

The party’s over. Time for the lessons to begin.
Fall films face terror at home and abroad
By PETER KEOUGH | September 12, 2007

Heat waves

“Summer joys are spoilt by use,” wrote John Keats, meaning the less you do between June and August, the better.
Summer reads to cool off with
By JOHN FREEMAN | June 28, 2007

Ice and fire

Burning Man began as a San Francisco pyromaniacs’ beach party in 1986.
Ice Cream’s cold contemporary art, Burning Man’s hot stuff
By GREG COOK | June 28, 2007

The man who knew too much

Around the age of 13, Philip K. Dick started having a recurring dream.
Philip K. Dick enters the Library of America
By PETER KEOUGH | June 28, 2007

Sifting the trash heap

There’s an image in an old Warlock comic book by Jim Starlin that sums up a lot of the peculiar, shared pleasure of reading comics.
Things I love about the gold and the garbage in comics
By DOUGLAS WOLK | June 28, 2007

Build it and they will come

The drive out Route 6 past the Orleans rotary gets ever more twee as the landscape changes to the scrubby pine and sandy margins of outer Cape Cod.
WHAT opens its new Julie Harris Stage
By IRIS FANGER | June 11, 2007

Cheatin’ heart

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being , Milan Kundera struck upon an idea to give every cheating heart a moment’s pause.
In Lionel Shriver, you only live twice
By JOHN FREEMAN | March 16, 2007

Babbling books

April comes like an idiot, Edna St. Millay wrote, babbling and strewing flowers.
Chabon, Murakami, Bukowski, and more
By JOHN FREEMAN | March 13, 2007

Sex, Iraq, and pop culture

How many times a day do you think about sex? How many times a day do you think about the war in Iraq?
The war for our attention
By ELLEE DEAN | January 11, 2007

In the zone

Nearly four years into the Iraq War, the mistakes that tipped the US presence from occupation to quagmire stand out amid the rhetoric.
Buying Iraq’s broken dreams
By JOHN FREEMAN | January 04, 2007

Not TV

Big names, new names, and a handful of poets provide worthwhile reading this winter to distract you from the Sopranos reruns on A&E.
Mailer, Lethem, Amis, Ashbery deliver good reads
By JOHN FREEMAN | December 28, 2006

Lions and lambs

The season is notable for the return to bookstores of canonical names like Atwood, Ginsberg, Kinnell, le Carré, Munro, Pynchon, and Vidal plus a fair share of younger lions like Eggers, Julavits, and Muldoon.
Pynchon isn’t all you’ll be reading this fall
By JOHN FREEMAN | September 13, 2006

Spring Arts

All the best this spring in music, movies, books, art, and theatre.
Table of contents
By | March 09, 2006

Good reads

According to the Greeks, spring is the season of rebirth, when Persephone was released from Hades and mom Demeter celebrated with flowers.
From Roth to Hall, and non-fiction, too
By JOHN FREEMAN | March 09, 2006

War and peace

Since September 11, publishers have been rushing to supply Americans with non-fiction books about the war on terror, the war in Iraq, and anything relating to the upheavals in the Middle East.
Books that travel from the Mecca to Memphis
By JOHN FREEMAN | January 02, 2006

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