There is a theater superstition that if the emptied house is ever left completely dark, a ghost will take up residence. To prevent this, a single "ghost light" is left burning at center stage after the audience and all of the actors and musicians have left. In this eloquent and moving memoir, celebrated New York Times drama critic and columnist Frank Rich reveals how theater became a beacon of security for him as a child. As he struggled with his...

The co-founder of the art magazine L'OEIL reflects on her life in the arts, including her encounters with such artists as Pablo Picasso, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copeland, Karl Lagerfield, and David Hockney.

In this memoir set on the high plains of Texas, Pulitzer Prize winner Caldwell transforms into art what it is like to come of age in a particular time and place. Beginning in the 1950s in the wilds of the Texas Panhandle, she grew up surrounded by dust storms and cattle ranches and summer lightning, and took refuge from the vastness of the land and the ever-present wind by retreating into books. What she found there, from renegade women to men who...

"The New York Times book critic gathers his literary chorus to capture the pure pleasure of reading and eating in this comic, soulful, semi-autobiographic treasure"--

"A memoir by the late journalist and critic Janet Malcolm"--