Posts by author
Maria Chiang
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Bechdel Interview and New Book Sneak Peek
Cartoonist Alison Bechdel was recently interviewed (by University of Chicago professor and comics scholar Hillary Chute) about her comics making process and forthcoming book Are You My Mother (Houghton Mifflin, May 2012). You can observe Bechdel as she is working on…
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“The Situation in American Writing”
“The Situation in American Writing” is a questionnaire (based on The Partisan Review‘s in 1939) that Full Stop has sent out to dozens of authors: “These questions are provocative because, at heart, they are deeply earnest. A number of questions…
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The Love Does Not Stop…
“Each of the Popper men is to a large degree confounded by love. The women they desire, invariably plucky and self-possessed, have to work to stave off being swallowed whole by their men. “Love and Shame and Love’’ offers no…
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Myths About Introverts
“Myth #5: Introverts don’t like to go out in public. “Nonsense. Introverts just don’t like to go out in public FOR AS LONG. They also like to avoid the complications that are involved in public activities. They take in data…
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More Love for Love and Shame and Love
“That’s one of the refreshing aspects of Peter Orner’s Love and Shame and Love: It isn’t a political novel per se, but the Chicago men and women who inhabit these pages exist in a world we recognize, where government is…
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This Is Your Brain on Jokes
“Well, anytime you find yourself making an error, it’s a downer initially. The initial emotional response to any discovery of error in your understanding of the world has got to be ‘uh oh.’ But in humor, the brain doesn’t just…
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Kafka Was a Legal Secretary
“It’s the stuff of dreams: proof that those evenings spent hunched over a desk, typing furiously might, just might, not be in vain; that Paul Giamatti’s character from Sideways does not represent an undiscovered middle-aged writer’s inevitable fate.” The Atlantic…
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Norman Mailer on Marilyn Monroe
“But when the portraits are all juxtaposed with Norman Mailer’s muscular descriptions of the traumas of her childhood, the whole thing is just too brutal. Mailer relates how, by Monroe’s own admission, her grandmother tried to suffocate her with a…
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Catholics in Literature
“Yet despite such a rich Catholic literary heritage with many contemporary admirers — one can’t help thinking of how passionately the MFA/Creative Writing/Workshop establishment venerates the stories of Flannery O’Connor — there has not been a new generation of Catholic…
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Kerouac’s First Novel Now Published
“The 158-page The Sea is My Brother, a tale of two young men serving on a voyage from Boston to Greenland, has been known about for some time, but is being described by Penguin, its publisher, as ‘a unique insight…
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Thanksgiving Weekend Rumpus Roundup
In cased you missed these over the holiday weekend: A Rumpus original essay on Freddie Mercury. The latest Albums of Our Lives: Joni Mitchell’s Blue. Sugar compiles 94 ways of Saying Thank You from Rumpus readers for her #90th column.
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TIME Difference
Americans are oftentimes painted as ethnocentric and unaware of global issues, and this interesting photo, comparing cover images of Time Magazine for U.S. residents versus the rest of the world, isn’t helping.