First, in the Saturday Essay, Sandie Friedman uses classic works of Holocaust literature to put her everyday stresses into perspective. Friedman’s early studies of feminism and time abroad in Dresden get her thinking about identity politics, particularly her own Jewish identity. A realization of this “inheritance” leads her to the Holocaust narratives, which “immersed me in a world that was truly in crisis…”
And in a review by Ann Van Buren, readily identifiable themes beckon us in Ted Mathys’s collection Null Set. Our “intellectual memories” of school are fodder for Mathys’s poetic eye. This “erudite and accessible” book, Van Buren writes, gives “mainstream” poetry a good name.
Then, in the Sunday Interview, author and “acknowledged master of creative nonfiction” Jill Talbot graciously submits herself and her work—which interrogates “genre boundaries and truthfulness in creative nonfiction”—to friendly interrogation. Talbot talks to Sarah Einstein about single motherhood, addiction, and her “lovely” new book, The Way We Weren’t.
