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CHARLES TAYLOR

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Charles Jackson’s second act

The author of The Lost Weekend gets a lift from a new biography and a couple of reprints
F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed there were no second acts in American life.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | March 18, 2013

Kate beyond time: The Kate Moss Book

Almost all models who achieve some degree of fame find themselves blamed for whatever agenda their era's most vocal scold happens to be pushing.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | January 08, 2013

Interview: Nina Hoss on Barbara

Quietly over the last 11 years, one of the strongest collaborations in contemporary cinema has been developing between the German director Christian Petzold and the actress he often chooses to star in his films, Nina Hoss. Petzold and Hoss's latest collaboration, Barbara , is their richest and finest film.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | December 18, 2012

SLIDESHOW: The cheap near-thrills of Sexytime

With porn so privately accessible now, we don't worry about the stigma attached to its consumption, the thought of someone pausing to peruse the art in front of an adult movie theater (hell, the thought of an adult movie theater) instead of just ducking in before being seen is almost touching.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | December 14, 2012

Bunny Yeager’s naked ambition

The Cheesecake Factory
Pin-up photography has served so many purposes — outlet for male desire; outlet for feminist ire; retro kitsch emblem — that it has barely been talked about as photography.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | October 05, 2012

Review: Katy Perry: Part of Me

A familiar saga
Lady Gaga's every arch move seems designed to be parsed by graduate students convinced that mainstream America is scandalized every time someone plays with — all together now — gender.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | July 03, 2012

David Goodis’s solitary walk

The dark end of the street
Because we live in a country that forever needs to be told to appreciate its native artists, Americans are in love with classification.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | June 22, 2012

Geoff Dyer's WWI memorial

Counting casualties
No matter what bromides are trotted out in the aftermath of tragedy or disaster about the ability of people to pull together, when it comes time to memorialize the event, fissures always show.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | September 06, 2011

George Pelecanos's Spero falls short

War zero
Better than almost any current writer, Pelecanos has shown what city dwellers have known for years: that it is urban neighborhoods, and not suburbs, where what we think of as the small-town values of community and knowing your neighbors have taken root.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | August 24, 2011

Donald Ray Pollock's over-the-top gothic

Biblical fury
Donald Ray Pollock's first novel is called The Devil All the Time , and that's exactly what's wrong with it.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | July 06, 2011

Beyond belief

Three literary fantasies for summer — including a true one
One of the purposes of escapist reading is to feed our daydreams.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | June 16, 2010

Cool killer

Ace Atkins runs down Machine Gun Kelly
Ace Atkins’s new novel is what the movie Public Enemies should have been.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | May 18, 2010

Good company

Inspector Montalbano might be the friend you haven't met
One of the attractions of our getting hooked on a series of novels with a recurring protagonist is the reassurance that once every year or so we'll have a friend to catch up with. What we don't like to think about is how it'll feel when that friend is in bad shape.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | March 02, 2010

Pleasure principles

In happiness begins responsibility
Willard Spiegelman seems like a nice guy. He has had the good luck to live a happy life without major disaster or suffering. But as a long-time professor of English at Southern Methodist University and editor of the Southwest Review , he has ended up living his life among just those people — writers and academics.

By: CHARLES TAYLOR | December 02, 2009