Reading Archive
A middle-aged white man steps onto the political stage in a fancy suit. He makes speeches that are simple and direct, low on facts but high on rousing rhetoric. He touts an inanimate object as the savior of the economy and a metaphor for the American way of life.
“The orders were given from Stalin’s country house at Kunstevo” begins Nathan’s Englander’s perfect short story “The Twenty-seventh Man.” In it, Englander uses a combination of the horror of history and the beauty of fable to tell a story about the power of story itself.
All literature is, in a sense, the literature of place—for all literature takes place someplace, calls up a setting with all its specificity of look, taste, sound. To ask the essential question of literature—How do we live?—is also necessarily to ask: Where do we live?
For years, the Breadline reading series brought together Seattle's writers, performers, and artists. I saw fiction writers and poets read there alongside stand-up comedians, pianists, graphic novelists, and rappers.
What happens when you read to manifest, rather than escape, your preoccupations?
During my first week of college, at the University of Iowa, several of us students were playing cards in my dorm room, when, unrelated to the game or to the conversation, one of the other freshmen asked me, “What are you?”
Beyond the leading sporting events and the idyllic beaches (and the political crisis), there is a Brazil of varied landscapes and experiences. These days I find myself returning over and over again to books that show another side of Brazil, books that are capable of challenging stereotypes.
Perhaps we can see the election season as the town sees Esteban’s appearance. It approached from what seems like a distant place, somewhat mysterious and dark and wrapped in unusual things, and over time has become the center of many of our daily lives.
Robots work in warehouses, explore Mars, assist police, clean floors, and serve as companions for kids and adults alike. But before Furbies there was Frankenstein, before Roombas there was R.U.R., and before androids we had Asimov.
In the age of Donald Trump, of Brexit, of a refugee crisis that is a key force governing international decisions -- nations, demarcations of identity, loyalty, apparent belonging are the lifeblood of political discourse. And I despise it. I want to reject it on a visceral level.