Category Archives: Books and Culture

Westminister Street daze

Posted on June 22, 2017 by

Channel 12 News reported last night that Westminster Street is spelled Westminister Street on a couple of signs in downtown Providence, one of them at the corner of Empire Street. And that it has been that way for years. And … Continue reading →

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Clam shack casino in R.I.

Posted on May 19, 2017 by

My wife’s longtime friend Christopher Scott Martin (that’s three first names!) is the author, with David Norton Stone, of Rhode Island Clam Shacks, pub- lished in April under the Images of America imprint of Arcadia Publishing. We went to the … Continue reading →

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My auction bid for Hazlitt

Posted on May 14, 2017 by

Here’s the column I described in my post earlier today, “Surrounded by beauty,” about attending the Bruneau & Co. auction showroom, in Cranston. *** January 26, 1989 Supply versus demand at its worst: Two book lovers chasing one book All … Continue reading →

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25 million books in limbo

Posted on April 27, 2017 by

The latest Atlantic Monthly (as it was once called) has a fascinating piece called “Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria,” by James Somers. It chills me to realize that but for a judge’s diktat, 25 million books – not pages, … Continue reading →

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Huxtable versus Huxtable

Posted on April 10, 2017 by

Ada Louise Huxtable’s first collection of her New York Times criticism, Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard?, is subtitled “A Primer on Urbicide.” The widely admired book, first published in 1970, is less than the sum of its parts. It … Continue reading →

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Architecture of love’s prose

Posted on April 5, 2017 by

Reprinting this long passage from Richard Steele’s essay No. 113 in The Spectator of Monday, July 10, 1711, is meant to amuse readers who might have become bored with the plain prose about architecture that is the meat and potatoes … Continue reading →

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Gallagher: “If Venice Dies”

Posted on March 31, 2017 by

Mary Campbell Gallagher, founder of the International Coalition for the Preservation of Paris, has written a review of Salvadore Settis’s If Venice Dies for The New Criterion. Here is a direct link to her fine review, elegantly titled “La Serenissima” … Continue reading →

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Adam on classical language

Posted on March 28, 2017 by

Robert Adam in his book Classic Columns addresses a topic many have addressed but at far greater depth of perception.  Few can fail to perceive that classical architecture is a language and that it evolves slowly just as the English … Continue reading →

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S.J. Perelman in Wash. Sq.

Posted on March 23, 2017 by

Who hasn’t seen a musical that makes you want, in the spirit of the moment, to leap up and dance down that stone balustrade past the water fountain and into the dappled park, singing a Broadway tune to beat the … Continue reading →

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Deconstructing the matador

Posted on March 18, 2017 by

Here is something else from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Jake Barnes is at a bullfight in Pamplona describing to Lady Brett, as they watch, the finer points of an impressive new, young, very handsome matador’s style: Romero never made … Continue reading →

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