Critical Essays Archive
The Disembodiment of Work in Severance and Several People Are Typing
Ling Ma and Calvin Kasulke’s novels explore the disembodiment of contemporary work culture as a grand coping mechanism, providing characters with a numbing, and even joyful, distraction from ongoing trauma.
The Insomnia and Dream Visions of Medieval Literature
Medieval literature’s exploration of insomnia demonstrates a grappling with what it means to live with, and accept, fear and anxiety.
Tracking Time in Kate Zambreno’s Drifts
Kate Zambreno’s 2020 novel explores the self that comes into being through an ongoing “dynamic contemplation” and co-creation with the surrounding world, and the idea that all that ever happens is our understanding of what happens to us, and how we filter that through our minds, mediated by our
The Joy of a Disabled Life
Nancy Mairs’s 1996 essay collection has a clear, singular, and unfortunately still radical intention: to demonstrate to “readers . . . who need, for a tangle of reasons, to be told that a life commonly held to be insufferable can be full and funny.”
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Disruption of Language
The difficulty of communication between writer and reader illustrates the instability and contradiction Theresa Hak Kyung Cha saw in the roles she inhabited. Cha understood herself as a series of multiple, fragmented identities, the makeup of which could not be fully or accurately articulated using the crude tools of
The Afterlife of History
By taking the imperialist Cecil John Rhodes and his readers through a history of Africa and its diaspora, Adekeye Adebajo interrogates Eurocentric history and what it chooses to suppress.
Nicholson Baker’s Deep Dives
Nicholson Baker’s longform essay “Lumber” is about the joy of one man doing the work of discovery and learning, and the fact that it comes from a time before the lazy chaos of the internet might be the most enjoyable thing about it.
The Cactus League’s Sense of Control
Emily Nemens’s 2020 novel is baseball superstar and secret gambling addict Jason Goodyear’s story. The unnamed sportswriter who shepherds the reader along, however, through his positioning and control of the story’s unfurling, attempts to make the teller at least as important, if not more important, than the tale.
The Time of Girlhood in Sarah Manguso’s Very Cold People
Sarah Manguso is obsessed with time. In her latest book, she returns to the concept, illuminating the complete lack of protection for young girls from a world that’s desperate to objectify and sexualize them as soon as possible.
Love and Loss in You Never Get It Back
Cara Blue Adams skillfully deploys the direct address in her 2021 collection. The love and loss that is examined throughout is heightened by this craft choice; the narrative arc that is created through its use underscores the narrative arc of the collection and carries the reader through the book