Dispatches from Storyville
Ian Sansom delights in Paul Auster's compendium of Americans' real-life yarns, True Tales of American Life
Between the lines
From Austen to Palestine, Maya Jaggi looks at Reflections on Exile and Other Literary and Cultural Essays and The Edward Said Reader and finds a persuasive reader of the world
Rogue’s gallery
Alfred Hickling enjoys a grand tour of modern art's masters and madmen in John Richardson's eye-opening Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters
Chemical awakenings
John McCrone on the raw joy of scientific understanding for the young Oliver Sacks in Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
Painting by numbers
Richard Shone on Bohemian gossip that has all been whispered loudly before in Dan Franck's The Bohemians: The Birth of Modern Art, Paris 1900-1930
Is less more?
Is minimalism a lazy rip-off, or beauty in its simplest form? Jonathan Freedland concludes our series on 'difficult' art forms.
The playwright and the pop mogul – a case study
Ian Jack on two trials a century apart
The last word on clones
Man hath all which Nature hath, but more, And in that More lies all his hopes of good - Matthew Arnold
Queen or country?
Sounding off
A great white lie
The world's wildernesses are seen as sanctuaries, allowing privileged visitors to experience harmony with nature. But, says John Vidal, their preservation comes at a high cost to indigenous communities
Prized obsession
A stint teaching in Poland bears fruit for a lifelong writer. By John Crace
When is a room not a room?
Answer: when it's an installation. Stuart Jeffries continues our series on 'difficult' art forms.