One of the more regrettable aspects of the closure of the New York Sun, at least if you asked us, was that it brought an end to one of the city’s smartest book review sections, presided over by poet and literary critic Adam Kirsch. We’ve had some differences of opinion, but we still think he’s an amazingly perceptive reader, and we’re just going to go ahead and insist one more time that you read his study of mid-20th-century American poetry, The Wounded Surgeon, even if you don’t like poetry, because he’ll make you want to find out more about it. (Anyway, we firmly believe people who say they don’t like poetry just haven’t found the right poem yet.)
So, anyway, we were elated to see that Kirsch has a new column at Nextbook, which debuts with a review of Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua‘s latest, Friendly Fire. We are told that this will be a weekly endeavor, which gives us at least one reason to look forward to Mondays from here on out.