Making Strange: On Victor Shklovsky Making Strange: On Victor Shklovsky
A Russian novelist’s fight, in life and art, to see the world afresh in all its cruelty and splendor.
Feb 5, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Ben Ehrenreich
Safety Net: On Thomas Bernhard and Siegfried Unseld Safety Net: On Thomas Bernhard and Siegfried Unseld
In his writing and life, Thomas Bernhard led a charge in the opposite direction. His publisher always broke his fall.
Jan 30, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Holly Case
No Man Is an Island: Fiction, Trauma, War No Man Is an Island: Fiction, Trauma, War
How Argentine fiction about the Malvinas War conspires in a trick of perspective.
Jan 9, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Jonathan Blitzer
Shelf Life Shelf Life
Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie; Andrey Platonov’s Happy Moscow
Dec 31, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Aaron Thier
Suspicious Minds: On Timothy Melley Suspicious Minds: On Timothy Melley
How thrillers inform spycraft, and the fictions that belie them both.
Dec 19, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Peter C. Baker
Ragged, Unkempt, Strange: On William Faulkner Ragged, Unkempt, Strange: On William Faulkner
For all the ways it is rife with tenderness, fury and ugliness, William Faulkner’s fiction is stubbornly persistent in its artistry.
Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Joanna Scott
Motives and Apprehensions: On Edward P. Jones Motives and Apprehensions: On Edward P. Jones
Edward P. Jones’s characters know that everything they’ve worked for might suddenly be taken from them.
Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Aaron Thier
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
The Letters of Kurt Vonnegut The Letters of Kurt Vonnegut
Says editor Dan Wakefield, hIs writing “is done with such seemingly simple language and style that it sometimes seems shocking.”
Oct 31, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Kurt Vonnegut
Singularly Adaptable: On Alain Mabanckou Singularly Adaptable: On Alain Mabanckou
In Black Bazaar, characters vent and stumble over their shared obsession with the colonial past.
Oct 30, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Aaron Thier