Crafting A Novelscape
In the words of my own personal goddess of literature, Joyce Carol Oates, one should “…never underestimate the power—benevolent, malevolent, profound and irresistible— of place.” These words make my heart keen.
Food in Cuba (and PARADISO at 50)
Angshuman Das’s excellent series on food writing has made me think about the role cuisine plays in Cuban literature and about the meals I ate when I visited the island in 2012 to do research for my dissertation.
In Defense of Lingering: Ethan Canin’s “Pitch Memory”
As a teacher, I am occasionally accused of lingering. One poem by Emily Dickinson can fill an entire class. An hour isn’t too long to unpack the final page of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
“If I Can Bear the Nights, the Days Are a Pleasure”: On Not Writing
I’m a slow writer and I accepted that a long time ago. But earlier this year, I noticed I was becoming slower and slower, writing a sentence a day, even a sentence a week at times. I was experiencing a period of drought.
Whit Stillman and Jane Austen: Together Again for the First Time
Everybody from P.D. James to your best friend's sister seems to be writing Jane Austen fan fiction but the only fanfic I'm really excited about right now is Whit Stillman's reimagining of Lady Susan, an early epistolary novella.
Round-Up: Historic New Librarian of Congress, 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Long List, and Pokémon Go
From the appointment of the first African American woman to the position of Librarian of Congress, to the Long List for the 2016 First Novel Prize, here are this week’s biggest literary news stories.
Story vs. History: Competing Ambitions in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s THE SYMPATHIZER
Like many Gen-Xers, I don’t know as much as I should about the Vietnam War. Sure I’ve heard stories—from an uncle who cleared land mines, from a middle school teacher ravaged by Agent Orange.
Urgency: On Writing About the Body and the Corporeality of the Lyric
A few years ago, I spent a good hour on a medical table, swaddled in a pale blue paper sheet, supine in the shadow of a plastic surgeon who had had to numb my face with three full syringes of lidocaine.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Folk Tales
My reading list of late includes a lot of folk and fairy tales, reappropriated and retold: Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Warrior Woman, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Call it my not-so-secret fondness for narratives that deconstruct and rewrite their source material.
Critiquing Communication Creatively: Egan’s Twitter-Formatted “Black Box” As a Critique of 21st Century Conversation
Today, we have this new platform for conversation, a no-man’s land in the arena of how we communicate with one another. We can say just about whatever we want however we want, we can share and consume anything from artwork to politics, lip syncs to gun violence.