Weekend Open Thread: Mirror

j0718

last Week at Portico: Last weekend’s Book Review was one of the worst issues I’ve ever worked my way through, and it was bad in many different ways, as you’ll find if you have a look at my review of the Review. My displeasure was enhanced by the unhelpful placement, two years ago, of a review of Peter Cameron’s Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You among the Children’s Books, which may have accorded with somebody’s marketing plans but which made then and makes no no literary sense. Writing about William Styron’s “Rat Beach,” this week’s New Yorker story, I assumed that it had not been published before; forgive me if I’m wrong. Finally, last week’s Friday movie was Woody Allen’s Whatever Works.