Flannery O’Connor wrote, “The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it.” In her second-person flash fiction piece “How to Eat Chicken Wings,” (Tin House/The Open Bar) Kristen Arnett takes a long look at the object in her title, and what’s revealed
THE STATE WE’RE IN: MAINE STORIES Ann Beattie Scribner, Aug 2015 224 pages $25 buy: hardcover | eBook Maine, for Ann Beattie in her new collection, is a state of life, and that is the beautiful trick of the title, The State We’re In: Maine Stories. It is both
Paintings of people looking at paintings, like this one, can make me fall into a dizzy sort of hole. Gazing at the painting to find, there, painted people gazing at a painting, suddenly I’m not quite sure where I’m actually standing, where the line between me and the painting
Writers are neurotic. Are we more neurotic than other artists? Definitely. And it’s time we had our own advice column. A Dear Abby for our literary breakdowns. And if I have to volunteer to be that person, so be it. The letters have been pouring in—which is weird, because
Amazon is suing over one thousand people who used Fiverr, the odd-jobs website for digital tasks, to offer paid fake product reviews at the site. The lawsuit alleges that “defendants are misleading Amazon’s customers and tarnishing Amazon’s brand for their own profit and the profit of a handful of dishonest
The last thing the world needs is another reimagining of the fairy tale. It has been done from every angle: straightforward, post-modern, and (yawn) from the villain’s perspective. So it was with some wariness that I approached Patrick deWitt’s new novel, Undermajordomo Minor, a fairy tale of sorts that
I’m drawn to tiny things. In the Matchstick Marvels museum in Gladbrook, IA, I was captivated by a model of Hogwarts, an elaborate many-towered and turreted castle made of more than 600,000 matchsticks. At Dinky’s Diner in Reeds Spring, MO, my family used to stop for miniature hot dogs,
Over the last few years, Vice President Joe Biden has popularized the refrain, “Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” As the title suggests, the dark, epistolary comedy “Constant Worth” by Jon Willer (Paper Darts) explores the values shown through personal economics, both in the present
Milton Resnick (1917—2004), was one of the most articulate and interesting of the abstract expressionists. I knew his work, but this past summer I discovered his personal history through a recently completed manuscript, Milton Resnick: Painter in the Age of Painting, by Geoffrey Dorfman, author of the well-received, Out
Daren Dean’s novel, Far Beyond the Pale, explores masculinity, religion, and delinquency in a coming of age story set in rural 1970’s Missouri. The novel follows Honeyboy who has moved back to Kingdom County, Missouri along with his mother following a stint in California. They return, in part, to leave