Literary Lessons for Turbulent Times
Here in America our expectations are grand. School followed by college, followed by a good job, a good marriage, a nice house in a good neighborhood where we’ll raise some good children who will have even more good things than we have. It’s the American Dream.
An Inquiry Into Brilliance: One Last Ride With Robert Pirsig
Robert Pirsig died last month at the age of eighty-eight. His death was covered widely, but within a day or two it had been washed away by the torrent of offenses and outrages known as the “news cycle.”
Big Picture, Small Picture: Context for Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find
These narratives depict a South struggling for identity in the middle years of the twentieth century, peopled with crooked Bible salesmen, earnest preachers, escaped convicts, one-armed grifters, and wayward souls seeking salvation, or at least satisfaction.
Reentry
In literature, a return to a previously inhabited place or state often becomes a means of measuring. Here we are, back in the same place, yet not quite the same. What has changed, and what hasn’t, and what does that balance of sameness and difference do to us?
“She had a face that would haunt me for the rest of my life”: Looking for Annemarie Schwarzenbach
Grappling with the complexities of Annemarie Schwarzenbach’s life–falling in love with her, in a way–entails addressing not just her political and ideological stances in light of her personal relationships, but also the realities of queerness within history, and the interplay of both of these aspects.
Essence and Absolute: The Storytelling Power of Perfume
When you start selling perfumes, you are in the business of selling stories. You must learn to be adept in all the tools a writer needs to do their work well. Scent is the most primal sense, the surest trigger of memory, of instinct.
Round-Up: Jean Fritz, Everytown Authors Council, and Black Panther
From the passing of Jean Fritz to a new authors council aimed at preventing gun violence, here’s the latest literary news.
Writing as Activism: An Interview With Jay Baron Nicorvo
I first heard Jay Baron Nicorvo give a reading in the summer of 2009. Last month, Jay’s debut novel The Standard Grand released from St. Martin’s Press. I had the chance to chat with Jay about his work and its intersection with this moment in American history.
“To resuscitate that stifled voice”: An Interview with Robin Richardson on Minola Review
Robin Richardson is the author of two collections of poetry, and is Editor-in-Chief at Minola Review. Her work has appeared in Salon, Poetry Magazine, Hazlitt, Tin House, Partisan, Joyland, and The North American Review, among others. She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, and has been
Sophie’s Choice and Radical Acceptance
I first read Sophie’s Choice the summer after I graduated from college. I don’t know why I waited so long. I had spent large portions of my childhood compulsively reading Holocaust memoirs. My mother, a children’s librarian, made phone calls and drove me to libraries in other towns to