The “the stirring, hot-blooded motion” of the poems in Irene McKinney’s collection Have You Had Enough Darkness Yet? is striking, given its posthumous publication. Charlie Atkinson reviews this “curious” and sometimes “playful” examination of mortality, noting the poet’s competence and profound understanding of her topic. The answer to the question posed in the title, Atkinson declares, is a definitive no.
The biases of literary critics and Marcel Proust himself play a part in Sandra Hajda’s retrospective on the famous author. Proust’s fundamental “shallowness,” Hajda writes, should actually serve as a selling point for his writing. This characteristic is “hard-hitting and gutsy,” and an understandably unappreciated aspect of his masterpiece, Swann’s Way.
Lastly, in the Sunday Interview, Gina Frangello talks with Tod Goldberg about his fascination with gangsters and the guilty pleasure of rooting for the bad guys. The author of Gangsterland touches on the perennial idea of the anti-hero and his latest binge-watching session of Breaking Bad. It is possible, Goldberg claims, to write a great story without dumbing it down “to the lowest common denominator.”
