ROUND-UP October 9-11, 2017

This week I wrote for PopMatters and for Whitehot Magazine! Let's dive in.

• "'The Weight of Ink' Is a Shining Example of Historical Fiction’s Best Qualities." PopMatters, October 9, 2017.

"Helen Watt is a British gentile historian coming up on retirement age, friendless, unmarried, childless, forged in iron by decades of academic infighting. Aaron Levy is an American Jewish Ph.D. student dithering on a Shakespeare dissertation, unsure of every facet of his identity except for his canny way with women. When Helen stumbles on a trove of potentially valuable documents from 17th century London’s Jewish community, Aaron is sent by his advisor to help her translate and make sense of the find. Their odd-couple mismatch is rather amusing, even in the early days of their work when neither of them particularly respects the other."

• "'Loving' and Losing Vincent van Gogh." Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art, October 11, 2017.

"Loving Vincent is no mere aesthetic experience; instead, it is a poignant journey into the lives that Vincent van Gogh touched when he was alive and the ensuing effect of his suicide, taking some of Van Gogh’s most beloved paintings as a jumping-off point for the narrative."