Alexandra Schwartz

Alexandra Schwartz is on the editorial staff of The New Yorker.

Rachel Cusk

The Passivity Project The Passivity Project

In Rachel Cusk’s fiction, the self is suppressed to the point of destruction.

Jul 2, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz

Nobody Else Sounds Like Lydia Davis

Nobody Else Sounds Like Lydia Davis Nobody Else Sounds Like Lydia Davis

Because nobody else thinks like her.

May 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz

Adler’s Way

Adler’s Way Adler’s Way

The slowly panic-making power of Renata Adler’s novels Speedboat and Pitch Dark.

May 15, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz

Shelf Life Shelf Life

Nikolai Leskov’s The Enchanted Wandered and Other Stories; Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself...

Apr 30, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz

I’m Nobody, Who Are You? On Zadie Smith’s ‘NW’ I’m Nobody, Who Are You? On Zadie Smith’s ‘NW’

If you get to the top, only to find that the voice hounding you with charges of inauthenticity is your own, what then?

Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz

Shelf Life Shelf Life

Joan Didion’s Blue Nights, Peter Van Buren’s We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People.

Jan 18, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz

Obscure Objects of Desire: On Jeffrey Eugenides

Obscure Objects of Desire: On Jeffrey Eugenides Obscure Objects of Desire: On Jeffrey Eugenides

In The Marriage Plot Jeffrey Eugenides can’t explain what happens to his characters without throwing in every last why.

Nov 22, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz

Shelf Life

Shelf Life Shelf Life

Jean-Patrick Manchette’s Fatale, Binyavanga Wainaina’s One Day I Will Write About This Place, Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s The History of Costaguana

Oct 5, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz

Shelf Life Shelf Life

Daniel Orozco, Orientation and Other Stories; Mercè Rodoreda, The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda.

May 18, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz

Empty Rooms: On Nicole Krauss

Empty Rooms: On Nicole Krauss Empty Rooms: On Nicole Krauss

Nicole Krauss's Great House swings from the evocative to the overcharged.

Jan 12, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz

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