The Internet in Literature: Sven Birkerts, Jennifer Egan, Chuck Klosterman, Jarett Kobek, & Patrick Madden
Kurt Vonnegut, in A Man Without a Country (as quoted by Chuck Klosterman), writes, “I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.” Yet books set before the ubiquity of the internet often grace bestseller lists and win
In Bookstores Near You
In recent weeks, my colleagues working as advocates and public interest lawyers inside the #BlackLivesMatter movement have called upon white people to join their efforts. Voicing support from the sidelines is no longer enough. And so they’ve been sharing lists on their social media platforms: what actions can white
Looking for Anne of Green Gables in Prince Edward Island
In June of 2008, I took an “Anne-tastic” tour, as one website put it, of Prince Edward Island, home of Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables. This summer, on another June day, I head back to PEI.
The Neighborhood Story Project
The Neighborhood Story Project (NSP) began in New Orleans in 2004 when Abram Himelstein and Rachel Breunlin started meeting with high school students at John Mcdonogh Senior High. Rachel and Abram worked with six writers over the course of one school year to help them create books about
Macedonio, Argentina’s Man of Letters
Most long-dead literary circles have unsung heroes, authors who were important when they were alive but have since fallen through the cracks of history for one reason or another. Macedonio Fernandez is one such figure—he is now almost completely unknown outside of his native Argentina, and even in Argentina
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “The School Bus Driver” by Souvankham Thammavongsa
In "The School Bus Driver," Souvankham Thammavongsa asks not how a love triangle begins or ends, but how it can continue for so long.
NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA: Journey to the Center of an American Document, Query XIV
We’ve reached the section of Notes I dread the most. It’s also the query I’ve spent more time contemplating than any other. Here, at the center of the book, he makes his infamous case for slavery in his time.
Writing Trauma: Notes of Transcendence
Writers have the privilege—and power—of putting words to experience: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Review: GRUNT: THE CURIOUS SCIENCE OF HUMANS AT WAR by Mary Roach
Those in the business of National Security classify diarrhea as a clear and present danger. It’s particularly hazardous for members of the U.S. Special forces, because diarrhea is an enemy from within that can attack without warning. I know this because I’ve read Mary Roach’s GRUNT: THE CURIOUS SCIENCE
Writ in Water: Retraining the Distance Vision
There’s a passage in Donna Tartt’s celebrated The Goldfinch, almost a third of the way in, where our protagonist Theo Decker first touches down in Las Vegas. He is arriving for the first time in the West, and Tartt and her literary eye are too.