Reading Archive
Can’t Get It Out Of My Head: Songs in Janet Frame’s Early Fiction
A good song is catchy: it’s quickly learned, and easily retained. It may be hard to forget, to the point of distraction. There’s a reason that the first literature was found in verse, in melodic and rhythmic patterns.
The Affair’s Slyly Satirical Portrayal of the White Male Literary Darling
While Showtime’s The Affair has been praised for its incisive exploration of the unreliability of memory, particularly in romantic relationships, some of its most insightful commentary is on the contemporary literary community.
End of Storytelling Era, Farewell to Vin Scully
This week a certain kind of storytelling will come to an end. Vin Scully, who began broadcasting Dodgers games in 1950, will retire at the age of 88. Yes, he was once a prodigy, announcing major league baseball games at just 22 years old.
Lying in a Hammock
Reader, I am having a bad day. I am having a bad day, and I can’t seem to write anything worth your time, and so I have flipped through my books and settled on James Wright’s “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.”
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Wind on the Moon” by Katie Burgess
We are a world awash with conspiracy theories, but what resides in the hearts of those behind the actual conspiracies? In her flash fiction piece, “Wind on the Moon,” Katie Burgess explores the internal struggle of a governmental doctor of spin.
Githa Hariharan Talks Indian Femme Fatales and Politics
A collection of essays, Almost Home is a wonderland of hybrid techniques. It contains post-colonial insight that goes beyond India and keeps readers coming back for more—more labyrinthine story lines, more social commentary, more pro-woman eroticism.
Chicanas in Literature
First, let’s you and me get in my time machine. . . . Suddenly we are in a world in which the Mexican-American border is being nationally debated, the Mexican-American people are being treated as second-class citizens—are punished for speaking Spanish, for teaching Mexican-American history and culture.
Books, Magazines, and TV Guides
You can’t make someone love books if they never could afford to access them in the first place, and you can’t sustain any kind of passion for reading if you don’t have the means to do so.
It Might Be Lonelier Without the Loneliness: Poetry and Loneliness
Poems, for me, are the epitome of Dickinson’s capital-L Loneliness, that loneliness that accompanies and keeps one from feeling utterly alone, its shadow-shape, its cameo presence.
Demented and Seductive
In the 12-episode series of her podcast You Must Remember This titled “Charles Manson’s Hollywood,” Karina Longworth takes listeners from Manson’s early delinquency, through his aspirational move to L.A. and subsequent occupation of abandoned movie set Spahn Ranch, to the details and aftermath of the murders for which he’s