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From Stephen Elliott
Novelist Jennifer Cody Epstein discusses her new book, The Gods of Heavenly Punishment, and explores representations of morality, how to address public acts of political violence, and the ramifications of war.
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Icelandic poet, novelist, and playwright Kristín Ómarsdóttir discusses her 2004 novel, Children in Reindeer Woods, which was recently translated into English.
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Lawrence Weschler’s collection of essays, Uncanny Valley, compiles some his best essays with the same perspective that he brings to each essay – an impulse to find the subtle convergences in the mundane.
Leïla Marouane’s 2010 novel The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris layers identity upon identity as it unravels the story of an Algerian-born Parisian banker.
Andrew O’Hagan’s playful novel The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of his Friend, Marilyn Monroe follows one terrier around the mid-20th century as he pontificates on Plutrach, Nietzsche, and acting.
A new volume of stories by Mavis Gallant traces the writer’s development from early stories of bewilderment and disappointment to the sharp, incisive later work of a master.
Rebecca Solnit’s 2003 book, River of Shadows, was about the 19th century photographer Eadward Muybridge.
If you only read one article on health care this year, consider making it the same one as everyone else: Atul Gawande’s “The Cost Conundrum.”
Gawande is great on paradoxes, mysteries and ethical conundrums in the practice of medicine, and this greatness of analysis extends to our health care delivery system.
...moreBlogging and stillness seem to be contradictory activities: I, along with many others, think of blogging as the relentless and hasty documentation of modern life on the go, news-in-brief for busybusy people. And yet what bloggers are often attempting is to draw careful attention to the overlooked and underseen, to stop us in our tracks and make us wonder at what we might otherwise miss.
...moreYet another reason to park your child in front of classical music appreciation videos: she’ll be first responder for your next baby! The Sound of Passion.
...moreOur view of the world is so often sculpted by front page and home page, so here is a look at some long-ongoing crises of self-determination that only occasionally surface in the news:
First, Nigeria and Big Oil. I’m not condoning militarism, terrorism, or sabotage, and neither are most Nigerian nationals, even though there’s a lot of oil on that slippery slope to human rights violations.
...moreJohn Keats’s tribute to sleep—called, fittingly, “To Sleep”—equates it, winsomely, with death. The poem is an invocation of that state which can be elusive, particularly to those with overactive or anxious minds, or small kids, or, in my case, both. It begins:
...moreBurnt Shadows is the most admirable new novel I have read in a long time, a work of astonishing naturalism, wisdom, and grace.
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Hermione Lee’s marvelous biography of Virginia Woolf tells us that Woolf applied the same clear-eyed and unstinting analysis to her father, Leslie Stephen, that she did to most of her subjects, subjects that tended to be Victorian, domestic, and preoccupied with the mind.
The most recent book I have loved–a term I apply only to those few books that get a place in my personal canon–was Alma Guillermoprieto’s Dancing With Cuba. Guillermoprieto’s books are great but few, so I saved this most recent one for years before reading it as slowly as I could.
It’s a tricky thing, a memoir of a death: you know how it’s going to end. The challenge for the writer (not only with regard to the conclusion) is making the inevitable unknown.