Manners & Customs

Book critic John Leonard reviews Tolstaya's new book, On the Golden Porch. The author is descended from Leo and Alexander Tolstoy, and has garnered comparisons to Chekov. But Leonard says Tolstaya most reminds him of John Cheever for the way she captures sadness on the page.

Critic-at-large Laurie Stone says that recent advertisements, TV shows, and theater betray a cultural shift toward a new traditionalism that debases feminism and expects women to return to conventionally feminine roles.

Book critic John Leonard says that V.S. Naipal's book about his travels in the American South reflects a tourist's mindset. The author's sentimental perspective prevents him from seeing the complicated race and class issues that shape the region.

Oklahoma-born Singer writes the Talk of the Town feature for the magazine, as well as profiles of ordinary people in New York. A new book, Mr. Personality, collects the best of his New Yorker pieces.

Director Stephen Frears directed the adaptation of the play, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, about a contest of sexual conquest and infidelity. Film critic Stephen Schiff praises how it handles eroticism. Despite some casting missteps, he believes it's "a brilliant tarentella" of a movie.

Critic Stuart Klawans says Patricia Eakins' new short story collection is as preoccupied with strange animals as it is different literary traditions. The tales are instructive, while not always uplifting.

Book critic John Leonard says many of the conclusions about indigenous culture in Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines are wishful thinking. But that doesn't mean the book isn't a great read.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews a new show that rebroadcasts the human interest stories journalist Charles Kuralt produced for the CBS Evening News.

Gay icon and writer Quentin Crisp. Crisp is known for his autobiography "The Naked Civil Servant." The memoir recounts the social price Crisp paid for being an out and effeminate gay man. Crisp counters his critics with politeness, which is the subject of his new book "Manners from Heaven."

Judith Martin, better known as Miss Manners, the name under which she writes her Washington Post advice column. She also reviews theater under her own name for the Post. She's recently written "Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior." Martin joins the show to defend the importance of etiquette, discuss class relations and manners, and answer Fresh Air staff's questions on topics such as splitting the check, catching an unzipped "fly," sexism and other "-isms' in the workplace, and the perils of modern dating and marriage.

Writer William Hinton wrote the acclaimed book Fanshen, about life in a Chinese village. He talks about life in China after the Cultural Revolution.

Fresh Air broadcasts a lecture by Alan Dundes about how folklore has influenced our behaviors, social customs and popular culture.