Books

The Gospel According to the Son, by Norman Mailer (Random House). Norman Mailer's latest act of literary chutzpah--an autobiography of Jesus--fails spectacularly. The New York Times' Michiko Kakutani calls it a "silly, self-important and at times inadvertently comical book." Criticisms: The language is stilted and predictable, with Mailer's only additions to the Christ story being the lust Jesus feels in his heart and the hard time he has with celebrity. Only Frank Kermode defends Mailer; in an erudite reading of the book in the New York Review of Books, he attributes to Mailer the subtlety of a theologian--whose "powerful mind," however, "works in a specialized way, not by theological argument but by telling or retelling a story."

American Pastoral, by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin). The best of the three novels published this spring by postwar Jewish-American novelists (Bellow, Roth, and Mailer). Some say it is Roth's best ever. "Never before has Roth written fiction with such clear conviction. Never before has Roth assembled so many fully formed characters or shuttled so authoritatively through time" (R.Z. Sheppard, Time). Narrated by Roth's fictional alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, it is the story of an assimilated Jew whose life is shattered in the '60s by his daughter's Weathermen Underground-style rebellion. He has "created a resonant parable of American innocence and disillusion" (Kakutani). In the New York Times Book Review, however, Michael Wood calls the book a "little slow," lacking the manic energy of the other Zuckerman novels. (Roth's publisher plugs his book.)

W.B. Yeats: A Life. 1: The Apprentice Mage, 1865-1914, by R.F. Foster (Oxford University Press). Coming after a long line of mediocre biographies of the Irish poet, the first volume of a two-part biography by Oxford historian Roy Foster is greeted warmly. It "integrates Irish history impressively into the complex fabric of the great poet's life" says the Washington Post's Karl Beckson. Yeats "would be relieved to know ... that the biographer is himself a fine writer, bearing with grace his knowledge of Irish history, and writing with wit, authority and, when appropriate, considerable eloquence," says Thomas Flanagan in the New York Times Book Review. (See James Wood's enthusiastic review in Slate.)

Purple America, by Rick Moody (Little, Brown, and Co.). As with Moody's last two novels (Garden State, Ice Storm), reviewers can't decide whether the young novelist is a hip Updike or a Pynchon wannabe. (This novel deals with a decaying suburban Connecticut nuclear family and a decaying suburban Connecticut nuclear power plant.) The New York Times Book Review's Janet Burroway calls him "a chronicler of the middle class for the millennium." Time's Sheppard says that the novel's "characters are emotionally intricate, and its tensions adroitly controlled." Others think he overwrites. "This is a novel that doesn't seem written, but declaimed, in a WASP Jesse Jackson style, from a Darien pulpit" (Dwight Garner, the Village Voice).

Television

In the Gloaming (HBO, click here for a schedule). Who would criticize quadriplegic actor Christopher Reeve's directorial debut? Almost nobody. Reviewers concede the made-for-TV tawdriness of this AIDS movie starring Robert Sean Leonard, Glenn Close, Bridget Fonda, and Whoopi Goldberg: pat characters and a tear-jerker plot. But the screenplay is said to redeem the melodrama. It is "artful and literate" says the Washington Post's Tom Shales. Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker says it "is superior to any domestic drama Hollywood has released in theaters in at least a decade." Newsweek's Rick Marin is the only critic to brave a negative judgment: "That [Reeve] can direct at all is impressive. Too bad the movie isn't." (A trailer for the show is available on HBO's site.)

Opera

The Ring of the Nibelung, by Richard Wagner (Metropolitan Opera Company, New York City). High praise for an all-star rendition of Wagner's four-opera cycle (the third installment was performed last week). Kudos mostly for conductor James Levine's "thrilling reading of Wagner's emotion-magnifying score" (Allan Kozinn, the New York Times). Also lauded are the singers, an ensemble of the world's greatest that includes tenor Placido Domingo, soprano Deborah Voigt, and bass James Morris. "This was Golden Age stuff--a reminder that not all greatness lies in the past, that not all the best performances are contained on crackly old recordings adorned with sepia photographs," says the Weekly Standard's Jay Nordlinger.

Movies