- John Stoehr
Arts Editor
There's more to art than you think. It's not just theater, paintings, books and dance. It's the enterprise of human creativity and it takes vastly different shapes and forms. Here you'll find my thoughts about the arts in Charleston and beyond. Neither of us knows what to expect.
Category Archives: Books
You can’t hold a candle to Kindle
March 21, 2008 – 3:44 pm
If you’ve been to Amazon lately, you’ve seen Jeff Bezos’ letter regarding the Kindle, the company’s venture into wireless electronic book sales.
The e-book has been trying to get off the ground since the mid-’90s without much luck. The technology hasn’t been good enough to be a valued consumer product. The Kindle was meant to address [...]
The Gibbes’ Landscape of Slavery: the Plantation in American Art
March 3, 2008 – 1:07 pm
A years-in-the-making exhibit by the Gibbes Museum of Art that looks at American history by way of images of slave plantations is receiving critical acclaim.
Called Landscape of Slavery: the Plantation in American Art, the show is currently on display at the University of Virginia’s Art Museum in Charlottesville through April 20. It will return to [...]
Book Review: Ace of Spades
March 1, 2008 – 3:30 pm
The passing of David Matthews
A new memoir chronicles author’s quest for peace amid turmoil of racial identity.
In Harlem Renaissance author Claude McKay’s 1931 short story “Near-White,” Angelina Dove, a pale African American hoping to move up in the world, asks her mother “if some people are light enough to live like whites, why should there [...]
Review: A new history of the Charleston Five
February 7, 2008 – 3:10 pm
A new book about the Charleston Five, the controversial group of longshoremen who went on strike only to face political and economic pressures, has been published by the Monthly Review Press. It’s called On the Global Waterfront: The Fight to Free the Charleston Five. Will Moredock, our political columnist, sent us this review. There will [...]
Casting some doubt on Web 2.0
January 27, 2008 – 11:03 am
Web 2.0 is supposed to be about flattening culture, about retaking power from the cultural and media elite, and putting it in the hands of peers, equals, friends — think Wikipedia and customer reviews on Amazon. Web 2.0 — it’s social networking, it’s peer-to-peer method of conversation and evaluation, it’s on-demand, niche-oriented nature — is [...]
Book Review: The Little Book of Plagiarism
January 15, 2008 – 6:23 pm
From a review I wrote back in February 2007 when I was living in Savannah. Posner poses important and relevant questions for everyone involved in creating intellectual property. The force of his argument underscores how serious the issue is, or will be, given that the chief export of the United States in the 21st century [...]
The Best-Sellers of 2007 at Blue Bicycle Books
January 8, 2008 – 12:41 pm
Top ten 2007 bestsellers at Blue Bicycle Books
10. Charleston Mysteries by Cathy Pickens
9. Fools All of Us: Stories of the White City by Jonathan Sanchez
8. Psalm, poems by Carol Ann Davis
7. The Boathouse: Tales and Recipes from a Southern Kitchen by Doug Bostick and Jason Davidson
6. Kakalak 2007: Anthology of Carolina Poets, edited by Richard [...]
Daily newspapers should serve people who read
January 7, 2008 – 5:41 pm
Not people who don’t read. That’s why newspapers generally are failing us.
And they’re failing us so badly that we’re now turning to fake news shows for literary coverage. Not TV news; fake TV news. Earlier this year, the New York Times ran an article noting the growing intensity of competition among book publishers to get [...]
The Best Fiction of 2007
December 27, 2007 – 8:47 pm
From The Week magazine, a digest of news from around the world —J.S.
. . . . .
1. Tree of Smoke
by Denis Johnson
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27)
Denis Johnson’s 600-page novel about the Vietnam War is “something like a masterpiece,” said Jim Lewis in The New York Times. Many of its key characters are figures we’ve [...]
The Sturdy Dozen: 2007’s 12 best books
December 26, 2007 – 6:05 pm
From M.L. van Valkenburgh’s annual books round-up —J.S.
. . . . .
A recent study said one in four Americans read no books last year — a rather appalling statistic.
So bibliophiles, unite, as we look back at the best and most diverse books of the year.
Let’s get literate!
Full story . . .
