Reading Archive
Destruction Modes: Sueyeun Juliette Lee’s Solar Maximum
Solar Maximum Sueyeun Juliette Lee Futurepoem, Winter 2015 128 pp, $18 “Perhaps we continue in the wake of a disaster we hardly marked,” runs the last sentence of Sueyeun Juliette Lee’s endnotes for Solar Maximum. Or, the last sentence could be the italicized incomplete fragment: “((when the sun disappears”
Morphology of the Essay: Ander Monson, Claudia Rankine, Eula Biss, Leslie Jamison, & Maggie Nelson
According to Wikipedia, a keystone is “used figuratively to refer to a central element of a larger structure […] that locks the other elements in place and allows the whole to be self-supporting.” With a stone archway, the form is inherent, or predetermined. First, there is the abutment, then
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “In Which Godzilla Questions Where His Life Is Going” by Josiah Meints
Godzilla has been a mainstay in popular culture since the 1950s, when he was conceived as a metaphor for the nuclear age and the new level of mass destruction introduced. Josiah Meints, in the story “In Which Godzilla Questions Where His Life Is Going” (The Collapsar) reimagines the famous
The Next Eleven Literary Scandals
So it’s your New Year’s resolution to go off social media, is it? Well, good for you. You’re only going to last a month, but you’ll get some good reading and writing done. You’ll exercise. You’ll remember that you have a dog. But aren’t you worried you’ll miss all
Deliberate Accidents of Discovery: The Trouble With Finding New Latina/o Writers
In an exercise of radical honesty I’ll share this with you: I almost always find great new Latina/o writing by accident. I think part of this is my pell-mell strategy of finding new books (at literary events, on coffee tables, etc.) though part of it can be attributed to
Literary Blueprints: The Orphan
In the wide realm of literature, having parents is a convenience that escapes many characters. The Orphan is one of the most prominent characters in literature, in part because the absence of parental figures automatically fuels so many possible motivations. Origin Story: Unlike some blueprints, which can be
Review: THIS IS WHY I CAME by Mary Rakow
This is Why I Came Mary Rakow Counterpoint, December 15 2015 204 pp; $24 Buy hardcover | eBook To tell you that Mary Rakow’s lyrical novel This is Why I Came is a recasting of biblical narratives hardly sets the book apart—the Bible, with its knotty metaphors, unequaled cast
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Souvenir Button” by Rosalyn Drexler
Proust famously stated, “The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.” In “Souvenir Button,” Rosalyn Drexler (A Public Space) explores paradises rendered, imagined, inhabited, and lost. Drexler opens the story with the unnamed narrator receiving a souvenir button made for her by an artist hanging out at
Review: YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE by Alexandra Kleeman
YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE Alexandra Kleeman Harper, August 2015 283 pp, $25.99 Buy hardcover | eBook | trade paperback | audio Seeming unmoored from both tangible responsibility and abstract constructs, like Mersualt in Camus’ The Stranger, “A”—the narrator of Alexandra Kleeman’s debut novel You Too
Literary Enemies: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie vs. Maud Casey
Literary Enemies: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie vs. Maud Casey Disclaimer: I bet they’d love each other. There are two authors who have a special place on the fiction shelves at the bookstore where I work. The first is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, though “on the fiction shelves” isn’t quite an accurate