A Commonplace Blog

A friend sent me this translation of an interview with Nicole Krauss in the Tel Aviv daily Yediot Ahronot : “American Jewish writer Nicole ...

As someone who is “ unambiguously hostile ” to the enemies of Israel, I was aggravated but not particularly surprised by Judith Butler’s ess...

The “leftist domination of college faculties,” sighs David French of the Alliance Defense Fund in a post at National Review Online , is “by...

Now that Israeli Apartheid Week has come and gone, and now that the Jews have answered with the holiday of Purim , perhaps there is time to ...

The seventh annual “ Israeli Apartheid Week ” is being held on university campuses across the United States this week to renew the call for ...

Although it may be wide of the target, Kevin Neilson’s suggestion that there is some “family resemblance” between Edith Wharton and Sigmund...

Over at Interpolations , Kevin Neilson suggests that Edith Wharton “shares a family resemblance with Freud.” Granted, my impressions of Fre...

With Christians under attack in the Muslim world—in Ethiopia , in Pakistan , in Egypt —now is hardly the time to start a culture war with th...

Nicole Krauss, Great House (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010). 289 pp. $24.95. Last December, when I surveyed the year’s best Jewish books for...

I am not happy that my prediction about Borders seems to be coming true . No one who lives by books is happy to see any bookstore close its...

Yesterday Jewcy unveiled the “50 Most Essential Works Of Jewish Fiction Of The Last 100 Years.” Jason Diamond, who compiled the miscellany,...

Now that even Obama ♥ Ronald Reagan, according to today’s Time magazine cover , it may be safe to celebrate the centennial of the fortieth...

NOTE : Jonathan Rosen, the novelist and editor of Nextbook, passes along the following letter, which he received the other day. “I had it ty...