Back in the late 1990s, I worked at the New York Press newspaper. It was a heady time—the paper’s circulation was soaring, the ad dollars were rolling in, and the paper got bigger and bigger, leaping from a thin tabloid to a thick tabloid wrapped in a broadsheet. Indicative of the its power and a […]
Margaret Halsey, With Malice Towards Som...
A Best Seller in 1938 That Remains a Fun Read, by Kevin R. Kosar, September 22, 2009 Margaret Halsey was all of 27 years of age when she published With Malice Toward Some. It sold 800,000 copies. Not a bad way to start a writing career, for sure. The book’s birth was the product of […]
Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the...
“A Peculiar, Amusing, and Impressive Story,” by Kevin R. Kosar, September 17, 2009 Christopher John Francis Boone has Asperger Syndrome, a disease a bit like autism that leaves its victims with very limited abilities to empathize or interact with other human beings. This is his story. As told by him. Before you say, “Oh, dear—too […]
Mark Spragg, The Fruit of Stone (New Yor...
There is Fiction, and There Is Literature, by Kevin R. Kosar, September 16, 2009 Fiction fiends are well aware of the squabble that broke out some years back that featured John Irving, John Updike, and Norman Mailer pounding on Tom Wolfe, and Wolfe lashing back. Updike wrote of Wolfe’s then latest novel, A Man in […]
John Gardner, The Liquidator (NY: The Vi...
Once More to the Recycling Bin by Kevin R. Kosar I came across the book in a recycling bin; it was piled in there with other titles from three or more decades back. Their authors were the pop stars of their time, DeVries, Simenon, Michener, and Ludlum. The books had been discarded because the owner […]
Ken Wohlrob, The Metronome Winds Down
What ITunes Is To Music… by Kevin R. Kosar I’ve known Ken since—gasp—1989. He is a man of eclectic interests, including world travel, art, film, music, and campy Mexican wrestling movies. It seems that each month he is expanding his palate and discovering new things that delight his senses. Since the late 1990s, he has […]