Forward.com

For a Versatile Critic, All the World (Wide Web) is a StageThe decade-old Internet revolution has radically changed the way in which we present ourselves to one another — sometimes deceitfully, often anonymously and not usually for the better. That’s one thesis in a new book by culture critic Lee Siegel, who knows of what he speaks.…Read more

Two Books for the Price of OneLipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes By T Cooper Dutton, 416 pages, $24.95. * * *Things are not what always what they seem in the world of T Cooper. To begin with, there is the title of her second novel, “Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes.” This sort of giddy riffing, where subsequent clauses are meant to modify the first one to ironic…Read more

Generation Birthright Grows UpThe Task of This TranslatorBy Todd Hasak-LowyHarcourt, 272 pages, $13.* * Raymond and HannahBy Stephen MarcheHarcourt, 216 pages, $14. * Light YearsBy Tammar SteinKnopf, 272 pages, $15.95. * *There was a time when you hardly ever picked up an American novel or story collection that focused much on Israel — Philip Roth notwithstanding. Today,…Read more

Seeking Virtual Realities In Both Science and ArtMore than a decade after David recovered from a Unabomber attack that nearly killed him, the prominent Yale computer scientist is at a crossroads with his life’s work.As a graduate student in the late 1970s, Gelernter made his mark by writing a program called “Linda” — after porn star Linda Lovelace — which allowed programmers to break…Read more

Papa Was a Rolling Stone How One Young Woman Pieced Together Her Father’s StoryAssembling My Father By Anna Cypra Oliver Houghton Mifflin, 368 pages, $25. * * *The old chestnut about 1960s hedonism ran that if you remembered the decade, you weren’t really there. If the joke once reflected a popular perception of the times, it also missed a much more unpleasant truth. Released from social conventions, unmoored from…Read more