Posts by author
Kyle Williams
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Make Me Believe
The response to [the Handmaid’s Tale] was interesting. The English, who had already had their religious civil war, said, “Jolly good yarn.” The Canadians in their nervous way, said, “Could it happen here?” And the Americans said, “How long have…
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Writing Gives Me No Happiness
A novel wants to befriend you, a short story almost never. Over at VICE, Lincoln Michel nabbed the elusive and brilliant Joy Williams for an interview about her newest short story collection, ninety-nine stories of God. Her answers are wonderful in…
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Rebel in the Rye
At the New York Times, Cara Buckley gives a quick rundown of a new J.D. Salinger biopic directed by Danny Strong (remember that kid from Buffy?) and starring Nicholas Hoult (remember that kid from Mad Max?)—”the man who gave the world…
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Near-Taxidermic Décolleté
What does “modern single woman” even mean anymore? Over at the New York Review of Books, Lorrie Moore investigates the idiosyncratic legacy of Helen Gurley Brown, the once and future editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan.
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Us, as Humans, Feel Like Failures
It just means that we have a desire for our language to be able to perform in a different way than it performs, and we have a desire for a reconciliation between the individual and the social that poetry can’t fulfill,…
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The Authentic Weakness of Being
… Initiation into the system of words Beckett was working with in the mid-1960s is more complicated, not least because the system was corrupted, a failure… Over at the Guardian, Chris Power writes about the short prose of Samuel Beckett,…
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You Don’t Own Your Children
I mean, why not? Lit Hub puts Helen Phillips, author of Some Possible Solutions, in conversation with Matthew Vollmer, author of Gateway to Paradise, to talk about their writing processes: often, letting a story go off in strange, new territory.…
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Voices Speaking Rather Than Words Written
Simply put, there is no theory without struggle. Struggle is the condition of possibility for theory. And struggle is produced by workers themselves. At The New Republic, Rachel Kushner introduces the newly translated 1971 Italian novel We Want Everything by Nanni…
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The Origin of Performativity Theory
She made it clear that the body is not a stable foundation for gender expression. For New York Magazine, Molly Fischer profiles gender theorist and philosopher Judith Butler, focusing on how Butler’s theory of performativity has disseminated into pop culture in…
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Post-Gone Girl Crime Writing
When today’s crime writers are in doubt, they have a woman come through the door with a passive-aggressive zinger on her lips. At the Atlantic, Terrence Rafferty writes about the history crime fiction, from pulp writers in the 20s and 30s…
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Endued with Vital Warmth
Over at The New Republic, Francine Prose writes about Frankenstein’s conception, as a bet in a drama-fueled writer’s group, as fueled by a young soon-to-be-mother’s anxiety, as a cleverly-plotted Gothic novel, as stories embedded in stories, as something altogether wonderful…