Posts by author
Ian MacAllen
-
Jay Gatsby Invades Poland
Polish language speakers are getting a new translation of The Great Gatsby, but a modern translation raises all sorts of linguistic issues. The primary difference, of course, is that the original translator wrote under the iron curtain and without the aid…
-
Notable NYC: 4/12–4/18
Saturday 4/12: Michael Parker and Ethan Hauser celebrate their new books with a reading, musical DJ Jim McHugh, and literary mingle. Wythe Hotel, 6 p.m., free. Sunday 4/13: David Gerrard, Douglas Watson, and Jason Porter join the Sunday Night Fiction…
-
Unreliable Men
The unreliable narrator lends a particular type of voice to a story. After breaking down unreliable narrators by gender, Elizabeth Weinberg concludes that there are differences between male and female unreliable narrators—primarily, that male narrators lack empathy. I’m a firm believer…
-
Twitter, Unplugged
Writing from Turkey, a country that temporarily unplugged Twitter to quell government protests, novelist and essayist Kaya Genç describes the experience of disconnecting from the service. Instead of the liberation he expected, the lack of Twitter left him feeling like a…
-
Working Girls of Laura Jean Libbey
Katja Jylkka, writing over at The Toast, looks at the working girl novels of Laura Jean Libbey—19th century love stories featuring “innocent,” “bewitching” heroines. Though these pretty young women were able to attract “the wolfish attention of every male in…
-
Book Deserts Threaten Vulnerable Readers
Writing at BookRiot, Josh Corman draws attention to yet another potential crisis facing low-income neighborhoods: book deserts. Anti-government and knowledge-fearing Congressman Paul Ryan has proposed funding cuts to the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, an agency that provides critical money…
-
Objects of Our Affection
Objects make for excellent writing prompts, Anca Szilagyi declares on the Plougshares blog. Objects can ignite memories or serve as a simple writing exercise tool. And objects within a narrative define how characters interact in a world. But be warned,…
-
The Ex-Nazi Poet You’ve Never Heard Of
Prussian poet Gottfried Benn landed on the wrong side of history, supporting Hitler’s government in the early 1930s when it promised solutions to the global economic collapse. But by 1934, his allegiance to the regime ended as it became clear…
-
Not All Online Journals Are Created Equal
Online journals have evolved into legitimate publications, and print journals are not necessarily better simply because they have physical form. But that doesn’t make all online journals equal. The Review Review details important criteria for writers trying to assess which digital…
-
In Depth on Peter Matthiessen
The novelist, CIA operative, and founder of the Paris Review died on Saturday. Two days before, the New York Times Magazine published an extensive look at Matthiessen’s life. His family descended from whalers, he spied on communists, and at one…
-
Translators Lost in Translation
Once upon a time, folktales contained sex and violence. But as the stories were collected by cultural anthropologists, they were gradually stripped of this adult content in order to make them suitable for children. Moreover, these neutered children’s stories often…
-
The Golden Age of Second Novels
Despite the challenges writers face with debut novels, the second novel is generally considered the most difficult to write. Some second novels fail to exceed the first, and plenty of authors never even write a second novel. But we might…