Donald B. Kuspit, Author, Jay Parini, Author, Tom Roberts, Author W. W. Norton & Company $75 (227p) ISBN 978-0-393-06008-9 As a successful actor, Anthony Quinn could easily have lived a life of ...

Novelist, poet, and biographer Parini (The Last Station) drops in on Herman Melville via Melville's wife, Lizzie, in this solid if sometimes slow nod to one of literature's greats. Twenty years into ...

Before you embark on this particular literary voyage, flip to the back of the book and read the acknowledgments. It helps to hear the author state, in his own voice, “This is a novel, not a literary ...

Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal, Doubleday Books, 480 pages. $35. A chance meeting in Italy in the mid-1980s soon blossomed into a friendship that survived despite Vidal’s notorious prickliness ...

President-elect Barack Obama has plenty enough to do to ready himself for inauguration day. But if Jay Parini had his way, he'd probably give Obama a copy of his new book, "Promised Land." In ...

“The time for me hasn’t come yet: Some men are born posthumously,” Nietzsche wrote in “Ecce Homo.” It’s a statement that might have provided comfort to Herman Melville, whose books — including ...

Seven Ways Seven Days Gets You Through the Week: Trustworthy local reporting. Piping‑hot food news. Thoughtful obituaries. Must‑do events. Stuck in Vermont videos. Eye‑opening personals. All the fun ...

L ongtime readers of The Chronicle who have never met him are nonetheless likely to think of Jay Parini as an old friend: He’s been contributing lovely personal and critical pieces to this publication ...

To new fiction now and the story of Geeta, jewelry maker in an Indian village with a dangerous reputation. You see; Geeta is a widow because she killed her husband. At least that is what people think.