Posts by author
Bryan Washington
-
Lost Language Explored
The literature of Alzheimer’s is a cavern unexplored, but Stefan Merrill Block does his best for the New Yorker: Nearly every novel I’ve read that attempts to depict the internal experience of Alzheimer’s also attempts to fit the disease’s retrogenic…
-
His Great Wide World
Ray Bradbury would’ve turned ninety-four this weekend. Dan Piepenbring commemorates his influence at The Paris Review: “Do you know why teachers use me? Because I speak in tongues. I write metaphors. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can…
-
Fine the Way You Are
Homogeneity in the literary scene isn’t a recent development. Earlier this year, Junot Diaz caused a stir by branding the unbearable too-whiteness of his workshop experience. Justin Torres and Ayana Mathis couldn’t help but contribute: “One of the characters is…
-
Distress Calls
There’s hardly an American who can’t find a helpline, unless that American’s a pedophile in remission. Convinced that the lack of said resource is dire, needed, and far from forthcoming, Luke Malone investigates the grisly alternatives; in an essay at…
-
Ferguson, Personally
Rembert Browne flew to Ferguson last week. Out of interest in the town’s newfound notoriety, the crowds contesting it, and the general ennui surrounding Contemporary Black Youth, the usual-sports writer compiled the meat of his thoughts in an essay for…
-
Growing Up Coetzee
Richard Linklater’s Boyhood has received a lifetime’s worth of press, but over at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Wai Chee Dimock grasps its literary paralells; alternating between analysis and essay, Dimock considers the film alongside J.M. Coetzee’s novel of the same…
-
Magical Influences
Lev Grossman has given the Harry Potter series an inspirational nod more than once, and he does it again over at Vulture. But he’s just as fond of The Bourne Identity, Marcel Proust, and the music of Metric: I don’t always listen…
-
Fitbitting
Diligent exercise can be an ordeal; reading David Sedaris wax poetic on diligent exercise isn’t. Over at the New Yorker, the essayist elaborates on his Fitbit, Australian housecleaning, and the problem with keeping a routine: I look back on the…
-
It Starts With People
In Charlotte, North Carolina, a Heroes Con panel devoted to LGBT visibility in comics was hosted by Kate Leth, Bryan Pittard, Terry Moore, Eric Punzone, and Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez. The sextet spoke on internal censorship, Internet trolls, and straddling…
-
Latent Forgiveness
At The New Republic, Eve Fairbanks offers an illuminating profile of Adriaan Vlok, a former apartheid leader turned evangelist: As we stopped at a series of dusty little nursery schools, I was struck by Vlok’s overall passivity. It contrasted sharply…
-
Harvey’s Heartache
Stephen King doesn’t always write horror-less contemporary fiction, but when he does, there’s usually still a twist. Over at the New Yorker, “Harvey’s Dream” has been resurrected from the archives: Then one day you made the mistake of looking over…
-
Merit Badges and Adolescent Angst
Over at the Oxford American, Rosecrans Baldwin treats us to a piece on America’s Boy Scouts. Also, adolescent angst: Any cool kids in my town whose parents enrolled them in Cub Scouts were gone by the time we were old enough…