June 2012
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Jonathan Lethem’s State of Cinema Address
One of the highlights for me of this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival was hearing novelist Jonathan Lethem deliver the festival’s annual State of Cinema Address. Lethem, an exuberant and insatiable cineaste, managed to cram mumblecore, the Occupy movement,…
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Love Under Empire
Triple Canopy excerpts Tiqqun’s Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, translated by Ariana Reines. The book, originally published in France in 1999, is out this month from Semiotext(e). “The Young-Girl is not always young; more and more frequently,…
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Interview with a John
Remember how MetaFilter linked to Antonia Crane’s “Paying to Play: Interview with a John”? The piece inspired an interesting conversation that’s still going down over there. Check it out? “I think part of what makes this piece successful is that…
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Suspended Detachment
“I know that those things, that scarf, that painting, that kimono, that ring, that past self—whatever happens to them physically, they exist for as long as I can remember them, or am capable of remembering that I once remembered them,…
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The Rumpus Interview with Lysley Tenorio
Lysley Tenorio’s debut collection Monstress (Ecco) is a wild and memorable ride through the world of transsexuals, lepers, healers, B-movie actors and, of course, the Beatles.
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Grief as a Living Thing
“I’ve never read anything like it,” writes Morgan Macgregor in a LARB review of Sara Manguso’s The Guardians. “The prose also seems to include the reader by spinning relentlessly in every direction, turning up every rock, playing with the language…
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Where Things Stand
Andrew Sullivan linked to Roxane Gay’s “Where Things Stand,” which revealed that nearly 90% of books reviewed in The New York Times were written by white authors. Amanda Hess also wrote about the piece, elaborating on the distinct conversations around…
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How to Tell a True Story
Ten years after, I sit in a psychiatrist’s office on the Upper East Side. This is my second time here. The first time, when I first met Dr. J, he asked me about my dreams: “Do you have any nightmares?”
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The Last Book I Loved: Never Let Me Go
The problem with writing about Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is that I can’t discuss the plot. A blend of science fiction and literary narrative, the novel hinges on a secret, a secret so all-encompassing and imposing, so carefully…
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Soul of a Whore and Purvis by Denis Johnson
As a writer, Denis Johnson has demonstrated a remarkable ability to polarize. On the one hand he has impressed some of the most prestigious awards committees in the United States. He has received a Guggenheim fellowship, won the National Book…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Here’s the thing you guys, talking robot baby. The history of maps is one of my favorite things. A man-made object is about to leave the solar system for the very first time. These book sculptures are pretty neat. Everyone…