We All Contain Multitudes of Tacky
Ever droll, Sadie Stein writes in the Paris Review about the reaction we’re (all) prone to have when people recommend literature based on our professed likes and dislikes: When someone says I will like…
Licking Vladimir’s Stamps
It may seem a little outdated to invoke Vera Nabokov’s name, but most writers seem to agree on the need for a “Vera”—a partner or friend, willing to edit and…
The Great G.A.N.
Does the “Great American Novel” actually exist—or is it just the name of a book by Philip Roth? Over at the New Yorker, you can read Adam Gopnik’s review of The Dream…
Devout Apostrophes
This week, the Paris Review has a really beautiful interview up with the poet Mary Szybist. She talks about religion, Wallace Stevens and her abiding love for the apostrophe: I have always been attracted to apostrophe, perhaps…
The Microphone on the Radio Tower
Marina Keegan died in a car accident just five days after she graduated from Yale University. But her writing lives on, and lends an empathetic voice to the often tedious discussions…
The Personal Becomes Public
Karl Ove Knausgaard’s magnum-opus, My Struggle, is an unflinching and exhaustive chronicle of a modern life. Interviews with the Norwegian writer are equally as vulnerable and exacting: It is too late to…
Cabin in the Woods
It may not be 1869 anymore, but fear not: the golden age of conservation literature is far from over. As part of the Pacific Standard‘s week-long series on “opting-out,” Eva Holland writes…
What Would Lynne Tillman Do?
It is nearly impossible to live in New York City without feeling a flicker of Lynne Tillman’s exacting presence. Over at the New Yorker, the indomitable Colm Toibin writes about…
Go Tell It on the iPhone
Praise the writer’s notebook, and praise the evolution of the writer’s notebook. Over at the New Yorker, Casey Cep writes about archiving the daily details digitally in photographs, rather than on paper:…
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zadie Smith Crack Each Other Up
Two weeks ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zadie Smith sat down at the Schomburg Center to chat about Adichie’s glorious novel, Americanah (and literature, race, gender, and love!). Their conversation was smart…
“Yes. Of course. But yet. Anyway.”
Harper’s Magazine interviews Leslie Jamison about her debut, home-run collection of essays, The Empathy Exams: Essays. On the complications (and yet! necessity) of empathy, Jamison writes: So there’s a lot of danger attached…
The Treasures in Union Square
If you are among those who fantasize about secret messages in the public world—love letters in Burger King wrappers and Narnia entrances in gym lockers—then geocaching, or at least an…