Posts by author
Michael Berger
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Paul Bowles, Travel and the Non-Christian World
“With few exceptions, landscape alone is of insufficient interest to warrant the effort it takes to see it. Even the works of man, unless they are being used in his daily living, have a way of losing their meaning, and…
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Adventures in Russian Literature: An Upcoming Adventure
“They couldn’t figure out exactly where the book fit. Part literary criticism, part travel writing, part memoir, Batuman’s collection of seven nonfiction pieces moves from the campus of Stanford University to Uzbekistan, contemplating everything from Isaac Babel to an overweight…
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Honoring an Amazing Writer and Father
“He had raised three of us single-handedly following my mother’s premature death when we were five, seven and nine. It was the 60s, when single fathers didn’t do that sort of thing. Most of his friends were sceptical. But he…
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Zines Have Their Own Wiki
I’m as enthralled by, addicted to and dependent on the Internet as anyone, but a part of me is nostalgic for something that is still being made by hand, with paper and ink and imperfect binding: the zine. I think…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
With the year winding down, the book blogs have been ablaze with your typical speculations about the best of this and that. But perhaps there are less obvious threads out there if we only knew where to look. . .…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Review Supplement
Greetings my fellow aesthetes, epicurians, book junkies and all around fine people! I’m back in the Sunday guest side-car for today and next week while our legendary Seth Fischer prepares to graduate!
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John Crowley’s Little Lessons From The Masters
“He writes with a typewriter, beginning with the first page, with a situation he has been brooding about, and some sense of the implications or characters involved, but no real storyline. He probes forward with this, discovering as he goes…
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What Buildings Would You Ban?
“Fear, on one side, of watching Europe turn into “Eurabia” —even if the demographics don’t justify such worries—and, on the other, of seeing centuries’ worth of social liberalization—including women’s suffrage and gay rights—fall apart in the face of religious conservatism,…
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Water Causes Cancer And Other Truths
Time Magazine has already called it “The Decade From Hell.” (Couldn’t have been worse than the 1940’s?! Could it? I mean the 40’s had Hitler AND Stalin.) And if you have survived the “aughts” reasonably intact as we caterwaul our…
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A Uniquely Literary Holiday Party (In San Francisco)
The winter is cold and dark and your fingers turn blue. Money is scarce. Mornings are the worst of all. Some of us get lonely. We reach for the bottle or the remote control. We long for free camaraderie in…
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The Undefinable Genre Of Science Fantasy
“Felicino: I thought writers were the least reliable guys when it comes to define what they’re writing. And most of them don’t really care. Gio: Well, as a reader and a writer, I care. Let’s see what they say out…
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The Letters Of Van Gogh Restored And Revisited
“In its capaciousness, the book also reminds us of a fundamental truth about Van Gogh: his ambition as a painter depended on words to give it focus and direction. We see this most obviously in the correspondence with Theo. “Writing…