The Reality of Absolution
Over on the National Book Critic Circle’s blog, Sam Sacks relays his experience reading Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, both as a teenager and an adult desperate to believe in a…
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Kyle Williams
194 posts
Kyle Williams is a student at Brooklyn College, studying creative writing and literature. You can find more from him on Tumblr at kaywhyelleee.tumblr.com, but don't feel like you have to.
The Academic as (Insufferable) Hero
Cagey and brainy, Bellow wanted to be the novelist of both the streets and the faculty lounge. Alas, in too much of his work, he serves as a cautionary tale…
Perhaps the Greatest Pleasure
It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because…
Good ol’ Gregor Brown
Kafka’s Metamorphosis just had its centennial anniversary; to celebrate, Lit Hub has brought us a lovely comic by R. Sikoryak, combining beloved Charlie Brown with beloathed Gregor Samsa. The results…
How Do You Contend with the Hubris?
For Salon, Teddy Wayne interviews six prominent authors on what has shaped their thoughts into word: with Lauren Groff, Alexandra Kleeman, Helen Phillips, Matthew Salesses, Steve Toltz, and Claire Vaye…
Summer Swimmer’s Lament
Over at The Millions, Nick Ripatrazone dives into John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” a story with well-deserved fame in the literary community, exemplary of Cheever’s style and a perfect read with which…
Willa Cather on Happiness
I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. Brain…
Claudia Reigns Queen
If you want to know what the effect that book has had on me, that’s the effect. I don’t care if you think I’m an angry black woman. I don’t…
Got to Pg. 359 and Stopped Reading
So why has Infinite Jest, supposedly such an influential novel, become a paper weight, a talking point, a bench-mark of high- and low-brow intellectuality? Why has no one (or, more…
A Complete Fantasy
I’m interested in the stories we tell ourselves, and how they may conflict with other people’s stories about the world, and how, if we’re operating under a delusion, we might…
Lolita Landmarks
Over at Lit Hub, Rebecca Brill has traced Lolita’s 62 years of history “from transgressive lit to pop iconography,” from inception to Kubrick to Lana Del Ray’s obsession on Born to…
Narrative Dependencies
People contain multitudes, and by multitudes, I mean libraries. For the Atlantic, Julie Beck presents us with a thrilling article on narrative psychology, providing some scientific basis for that brilliant…