Book Reviews by Daniel Brown
Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Chabon When a great writer like Michael Chabon disappoints, the disappointment is that much greater, because our expectations are high about virtually anything he writes, and because contemporary American fiction has been so strikingly poor in 2012. The real Telegraph Avenue became infamous in the l960s as a street in Berkely, […]
September Issue Now Online
Letter from the Editor ÆQAI resumes its regular monthly edition with this September issue. We welcome everyone to a new and fresh fall art season, and are pleased to offer a number of reviews, essays, profiles and special guest columns. The entire visual arts community is now preparing for the region-wide celebration of photography, fotofocus, […]
Summers in Connecticut with Marilyn Monroe
Editor’s note: Since this is the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death, and since her fame continues to grow ( a new twist includes some feminist writers claiming her as one of theirs ex post facto), aeqai is reprinting an article I wrote in 2004 and was picked up by Weston (Conn.) Monthly, where the […]
“Lionel ASBO: State of England” By Martin Amis
The much–and deservedly–praised English writer Martin Amis, newly moved to Brookyln (his wife is American), offers his latest novel, Lionel ASBO: State of England. Although it’s nearly impossible to critique or argue the quality of Amis’ prose, and one delights in his splendid word choices and tight structures, this novel falls flat and is a […]
Two New English Novelists
I remember when Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, and Julian Barnes were still the angry young men of English literature. All three are now in their sixties, and their early promise has more than panned out. But England is still giving us young writers of great merit; two of them, Jo Baker and Harriet Lane, have […]
Donna Talerico at Greenwich House Gallery
By: Daniel Brown Donna Talerico wows us, once again, with her new paintings of France, currently on view at Greenwich House Gallery in O’Bryonville. Her annual trip to France has been generating some of the most energetic and engaging paintings in this region, where she lives. Talerico manages to be both an Impressionist and an […]
Book Review: The Lower River, By: Paul Theroux
Book Review By: Daniel Brown Paul Theroux may best be known as America’s most engaging travel writer; the books that first brought him to my attention were The Great Railway Bizarre and The Old Patagonian Express, which he wrote almost four decades ago. Like Joan Didion, Theroux’s career includes writing both non-fiction and fiction, and […]
Book Reviews: “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” & “Grief Behind Bars”
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk Review by Daniel Brown Texan Ben Fountain has written the best novel of 2012 to date. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is an anti war book for our times; its M.A.S.H – like black humor mitigates the underlying horror of the Iraq war. Fountain proposes that ten soldiers, currently fighting […]
May Issue of ÆQAI is Online
Dear Readers, We are happy to bring you the May 2012 issue of ÆQAI, your journal of the visual arts in Greater Cincinnati. Although we are nearing the end of the art season, which runs parallel to the school calendar, there is no lessening of interesting shows or of a richness in the overall tapestry […]
Master of the Not-So-Still Still Life
Still life is the most problematic—and most abstract—of genres, as the paintings seem to lack the grandeur associated with landscapes or with figures that can assume allegorical or mythological-religious resonance. Because the objects depicted are taken from ordinary life, however, they intimately speak to our daily existence and to our interior lives. Sheldon Tapley revitalizes, […]