Posts by author
Alex Norcia
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The Alien Angel
In The Times Literary Supplement, Marjorie Perloff explores “the strange voice of Edgar Allan Poe,” invoking the criticism of Harold Bloom, T.S. Eliot, and Jerome McGann, whose new book, The Poet Edgar Allan Poe: Alien Angel, she has set out…
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Hollywood History and the Truth
In The New York Review of Books, Francine Prose analyzes “the recent controversies about the accuracy of ‘historical’ films” in Hollywood, concluding that maybe “the real source of controversy isn’t the question of truth in historical films, but rather the…
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Chekov’s Journalism
For the New Yorker, Akhil Sharma discusses why Anton Chekov’s Sakhalin Island stands as the best piece of journalism produced in the nineteenth-century.
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A Literary Love Affair
Using Deidre Shauna Lynch’s Loving Literature: A Cultural History as a starting point, the New Yorker’s Joshua Rothman traces our romantic love affair with books, identifying the point where reading novels stopped being mainly an intellectual activity and transformed into an emotional…
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The First Wheel
In the New York Times Magazine, Wesley Yang profiles Eddie Huang, the author of Fresh Off The Boat, a memoir about his life as an Asian-American growing-up in Orlando. The book will soon become a primetime show on ABC. The…
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The Literary Meet Market
At The Millions, Matt Seidel has some thoughts on the “author x meets author y” formula, and he “set[s] out to conceive of and review the most convivial work imaginable, The Summit (an entirely fictional work of fiction).”
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“Dubious” Plots and “Real” Jokes
For the New Yorker, Dave Haglund reviews Louis C.K.’s stand-up special, at times pointing out the differences between crafting a comedic set and a piece of literature; at Electric Literature, Jason Diamond holds some opposite opinions.
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Literary Duets
At The Millions, Nick Ripatrazone reviews BOMB Magazine’s “The Author Interviews,” “a collection of 35 interviews spanning 30 years.” He meditates on the competing definitions and modes, concluding he is “drawn” to interviews not “for their performative components” but for how…
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Art & Anachronisms
In the New Statesman, Oliver Farry investigates the times we notice anachronisms in film, television, and literature—and why we care.
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Irving Howe’s Poor Timing
In The New Republic, David Marcus has a comprehensive essay on Irving Howe, exploring, among other things, how the writer’s generation may have had setbacks by arriving too “late” but also too “early.”
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Tragedy’s Irony
Using W.H. Auden and his predecessor, Rabelais, Nina Martyris discusses in the Los Angeles Review of Books how irony is being implemented to confront the tragedy of Charlie Hebdo: So how should one respond? Anger and grief are appropriate enough. Even…
