Jacqueline Susann’s Queer Feminism Jacqueline Susann’s Queer Feminism
How does Valley of the Dolls actually hold up as a read 50 years later?
Feb 26, 2016 / Tim Murphy
Whodunit, Ruth Rendell? Whodunit, Ruth Rendell?
The British crime novelist’s work displays a growing acuity of psychological perception and an authority to her moral vision.
Feb 25, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Charles Taylor
‘On the Edge’ Gives No Pleasure ‘On the Edge’ Gives No Pleasure
Rafael Chirbes’s second work to be translated into English operates like a psychological health tonic: It’s corrosive going down, but afterward the effect is invigorating.
Feb 25, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Aaron Thier
A Larger Life A Larger Life
What A Little Life, the churn of narrative nonfiction, and, thus, likely our real views of victims of trauma are missing is the recognition of agency.
Feb 24, 2016 / Larissa Pham
Harper Lee, 1926–2016 Harper Lee, 1926–2016
Lee belonged to a generation of Southern writers who rejected the racist heritage of their childhoods but not the world that nurtured it.
Feb 22, 2016 / Richard Lingeman
Human Nature Shines Through Human Nature Shines Through
Garth Greenwell’s exquisite first novel outlines the shape of desire by filling in everything around it.
Feb 10, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Damon Galgut
Vladimir Sorokin’s Absurdist Excess Vladimir Sorokin’s Absurdist Excess
Even the Russian author’s most sincere explorations tend toward brutal deadpan satire, cartoonish extremes of violence, comically unsexy sex, and flatulence.
Feb 4, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Ben Ehrenreich
J.M. Coetzee’s Facts of Life J.M. Coetzee’s Facts of Life
For the South African author, the selves we write and read may be truer than any other.
Jan 28, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Becca Rothfeld
Rushdie Misses the Magic Rushdie Misses the Magic
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights has all the markers of a Salman Rushdie novel, but it’s not a great book.
Jan 21, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Aaron Thier
December 29, 1922: William Gaddis Is Born December 29, 1922: William Gaddis Is Born
“What [The Recognitions] lacks, like all claustrophobic works of art, is imagination.”
Dec 29, 2015 / 150th Anniversary / Richard Kreitner