William Deresiewicz

William Deresiewicz (bill at thenation.com) is a Nation contributing writer. He was nominated for a 2009 National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism.

Currently

  • Honey and Salt

    October 14, 2009

    Technology has made us capable of exterminating ourselves. In The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood wonders what might save us.

  • Aracataca and Sucre

    September 2, 2009

    Will narrowed on a single object and fixed in the face of adversity--such is the recurring story of Gabriel García Márquez's work and life.

  • The Origin of the Specious

    June 24, 2009 Subscribe

  • Adaptation

    May 20, 2009

    If art is a product of the mind, and the mind a product of evolution, is art a product of evolution?

  • Exchange

    May 20, 2009 Subscribe

  • When the Whip Comes Down

    April 22, 2009

    With Don't Cry, a disabling self-consciousness has crept into Mary Gaitskill's fiction.

  • Lab Test

    February 25, 2009

    Does the profit motive distort and degrade the unpredictable path of scientific discovery?

2008

  • Letters

    December 17, 2008 Subscribe

  • How Wood Works

    November 19, 2008

    James Wood may be the best literary critic we have, but the status he enjoys reveals just how far we have fallen.

  • Seeing Past the Ivy

    October 21, 2008

    Why the commentariat's response to hand-wringing about "the decline of reading" condescends to the large mass of nonspecialist readers.

  • Homing Patterns

    September 24, 2008

    Marilynne Robinson's new novel explores faith, loneliness and the national passion play of race.

  • Meetings, Purchases, Pleasures

    August 27, 2008

    Salman Rushdie probes the limits of the imagination to produce his most coherent and readable novel.

  • Dead Letters

    May 22, 2008

    Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig saw himself as a Freud of fiction--a fellow spelunker in the caverns of the heart.

  • Professing Literature in 2008

    March 11, 2008

    Why is the intellectual agenda of English departments being set by teenagers?

  • Foes

    February 7, 2008

    J.M. Coetzee, now out with a new novel and a collection of essays, reminds us what a master he is at turning life into narrative.

2007

  • Fukú Americanus

    November 8, 2007

    Junot Díaz's masterful new novel maps the ambiguities in the modern immigrant experience in America.

  • The Imaginary Jew

    May 10, 2007

    Two new novels, by Michael Chabon and Nathan Englander, recharge the modern Jewish experience with a sense of the exotic.

  • Cafe Society

    April 26, 2007

    Clive James's erudite new collection of essays celebrates the best of twentieth-century art, thought and politics.

  • The Book of Questions

    February 6, 2007

    In a book-length essay on the novel, Milan Kundera foresees the curtain of literary history drawing to a close.

2006

  • Awesome Powers

    November 21, 2006 Subscribe

  • Representative Fictions

    November 16, 2006

    An ambitious two-volume history of the novel explores its evolution across continents and centuries.

  • Science Fiction

    September 20, 2006

    Richard Powers's The Echo Maker speaks volumes about neuroscience, nature and environmental degradation. But it says little about what it means to be alive.

  • Dead Man

    May 11, 2006

    Philip Roth's Everyman is a contemporary morality play that explores the author's obsessions with health and virility, ecstasy and betrayal, and the certainty and solitude of death.

2005

  • Zadie Smith's Indecision

    September 15, 2005

    It can't be easy to rein in a writer as successful as Zadie Smith. Her new novel, On Beauty, proves it's almost impossible.

  • It's a Man's, Man's World

    August 25, 2005

    Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men seems designed as a calculated assault on the reader.

2004

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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Blogs

» The Beat

Facing Bipartisan Criticism, RNC's Steele Asks If Race Is Factor | "Why? Is it because Michael Steele is the chairman, or is it because a black man is chairman?” he wonders. Maybe he could compare notes with Obama.
John Nichols
Posted at 8:46 PM ET

» Editor's Cut

New Web Column at The Washington Post | Every Tuesday, I'll be featuring progressive thinking about politics and challenging the Right in my new web column for The Washington Post. Read my first one here.
Katrina vanden Heuvel
24 Comments
Posted at 4:52 PM ET

» The Notion

When Snow Melts: Vancouver’s Olympic Crackdown | Anger is growing in Vancouver in advance of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Like Olympic clockwork, here comes the media crackdown.
Dave Zirin
40 Comments

» The Dreyfuss Report

The Mind-Boggling Stupidity of Michael Rubin | How an AEI apparatchik's love affair for Ahmed Chalabi blinds him to Chalabi's pro-Iran treachery.
Robert Dreyfuss
25 Comments

» Act Now!

Demand Question Time | Join the call for the President and Congress to implement regular Question Time sessions.
Peter Rothberg
55 Comments

» And Another Thing

How to Counterbalance Focus on the Family on Superbowl Sunday | Give to help low income girls and women.
Katha Pollitt
54 Comments

» Altercation

Slacker Friday | James O'Keefe and Alter-reviews.
Eric Alterman