Heller McAlpin

How Christopher Hitchens Faced His Own 'Moratality'

Heller McAlpin — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 11:03:00 +0000

When a consummately articulate, boundlessly bold journalist stricken with stage 4 esophageal cancer reports from the front lines about facing what he calls, among other things, "hello darkness my old friend," you sit up and pay attention. Mortality, by virtue of its ultimate unavoidability, raises questions about the very meaning of life, making it as challenging a subject as any tackled by Christopher Hitchens in his brilliant career. It is, in fact, one of the subjects, right up there with love, and you can count on Hitchens to eschew weak-kneed sentimentality.

Haves And Have-Nots In 'NW' London

Heller McAlpin — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 12:26:00 +0000

Some postal codes encapsulate a socioeconomic profile in tidy shorthand: 10021 for Manhattan's tony Upper East Side, NW6 and NW10 for London's racially mixed, resolutely ungentrified northwest quadrant.

'Winter Journal': Paul Auster On Aging, Mortality

Heller McAlpin — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 11:03:00 +0000

"You think it will never happen to you," Paul Auster writes about aging and mortality in Winter Journal, penned during the winter of 2011, when he turned 64. Thirty years ago, Auster followed several volumes of poetry with The Invention of Solitude, an unconventional, profoundly literary meditation on life, death and memory triggered in part by the sudden death of his remote father and in part by the breakup of his first marriage to the short story writer Lydia Davis.

Screwball Satire With A Warm Heart In 'Bernadette'

Heller McAlpin — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:03:00 +0000

What happens when a talented, Type A, hyperachieving woman married to an even more successful man quits working? In former television writer Maria Semple's experience — which she's channeled into her first two novels — the mood swings, loss of bearings, and toxic dissatisfaction aren't pretty, though she plays them for laughs.

Semple's first novel, This One Is Mine, featured an at-loose-ends former television writer who risks her cushy life for a sexually mesmerizing, drug-addicted bass player.