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P.E. Garcia

P.E. Garcia is an Editor-at-Large for the Rumpus and a contributor to HTMLGiant. They currently live in Philadelphia, where they were recently accidentally elected to be Judge of Elections. Find them on Twitter: @AvantGarcia.
  • P.E. Garcia

    An Anti-anti-science Novel

    “It is a comfort to know how swiftly and thoroughly a civilization can crumble when nobody wants it anymore,” Rowan says early in his story…that observation is more than just a wry criticism of our current defunding of space exploration.…

  • P.E. Garcia

    Teaching Pynchon

    At its worst, Pynchon’s prose is a beautiful failure. At its best, Pynchon’s prose is revelatory. Nick Ripatrazone, writing for The Millions, talks about what makes it so hard to teach The Crying of Lot 49.

  • P.E. Garcia

    Yeats’s Easter Poem

    The Ploughshares blog looks at William Butler Yeats’s “Easter 1916” and the violent uprising that inspired it.

  • P.E. Garcia

    The Savagery of T.C. Boyle

    So while there might be those out there who really want to elevate (and pigeonhole) Boyle as an important writer dedicating his career and talents to considering these seminal concerns of the American character (or whatever), Harder proves he’s too…

  • P.E. Garcia

    The Politics of Genre

    The Guardian explores why crime fiction tends to lean left, while thrillers often are more conservative.

  • P.E. Garcia

    Beating Writer’s Block

    For Intelligent Life, Tim de Lisle captured some of Philip Pullman’s wisdom from his most recent interview, including his advice on how to get over writer’s block: If you’re stuck, if you’re really desperate—dialogue: “Hello.” “Oh hello.” “How are you?”…

  • P.E. Garcia

    The Power of “We”

    We amplifies. That’s part of why writers are drawn to the collective voice, I think: it’s louder. For the Ploughshares blog, Clare Beams examines the use of the collective voice in literature.

  • P.E. Garcia

    Making Carrie Comfortable

    Carrie is most definitely of the horror genre, and horror is never about being comfortable. Society has changed, but what’s at the core of King’s novel remains as raw and powerful as it was four decades ago: Peer pressure, cliques,…

  • P.E. Garcia

    The Most Common Rhetorical Device You’ve Never Heard Of

    Like its cousin apophasis, litotes is one of the stealth bombers of the rhetorical world – its anonymous ubiquity defies reason and gives it the power to strike at any time, without warning. The Guardian explores litotes, a rhetorical device…

  • P.E. Garcia

    Weird, Wonderful Mexican Pulp Cover Art

    They featured characters having hallucinations and apparitions; super-strength robots throwing cars on a destructive rampage; jealous gorillas who are furious they didn’t end up with the girl; a thieving woman stealing a piglet under the cover of nighttime; and circus…

  • P.E. Garcia

    How to Move Your Arms While You Talk

    Slate looks at the 1857 book Sanders’ School Speaker: A Comprehensive Course of Instruction in the Principles of Oratory and its illustrations of what you should do with your arms when you talk.

  • P.E. Garcia

    The Stories of a Story-Hater

    “I hate literature,” wrote Varlam Shalamov in a 1965 letter. “I do not write memoirs; nor do I write short stories.” Despite his claim, Varlam Shalamov would become one of the most prolific Russian writers, producing 147 short stories about…