Posts by author
P.E. Garcia
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Beckett Resurrected
Even a writer as great as Samuel Beckett faced some rejection. “Echo’s Bones,” a rejected short story from Beckett’s early days, has just been released. NPR spoke with Beckett scholar Mark Nixon to find out the story behind the story.
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Our Pets, Ourselves
After her dog leapt out of a third story window, writer Laurel Braitman became fascinated by animal psychology. Check out her interview with NPR to see what animal behavior reveals about humans and why gorillas at the Bronx Zoo love…
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Ancient Laughter
What does a satire by Veronica Geng have in common with Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment? What do either have in common with Gilbert Godfried’s famous performance of “The Aristocrats” a few weeks after September 11? And what do…
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Flannery O’Connor Can’t Be Tamed
This quote from Paul Lisicky in an essay at The Millions neatly sums up why it can be so difficult to teach Flannery O’Connor’s work: …it’s so easy to simplify O’Connor. Even sophisticated readers are prone to missing out on…
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Inside a Writer’s Head
New research reveals how a creative writer’s brain functions while writing. As it turns out, it might not be so different from a basketball player’s brain. The New York Times has the whole story.
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Don’t Invite Borges to Your World Cup Party
As the World Cup continues, everyone seems to be a soccer fan. One person who wasn’t? Jorge Luis Borges. According to The New Republic, the famed Argentine writer loathed the game, going so far as to purposefully schedule a lecture…
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The Great War Poets
World War I produced a number of important literary figures. Now, coming upon the war’s centennial, a new blog called A Century Back aims to present that era’s major literary events in real time. Read more about it at The…
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The Trouble with Translating Proust
For the Boston Review, Leland de la Durantaye assesses the latest edition of Proust’s Swann’s Way. Writing more than just a book review, Durantaye outlines some of Proust’s early struggles, as well as his lasting legacy, and delves into the…
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The Strange Life of Dan Carter Beard
Dan Carter Beard wasn’t just one of the founders of Boy Scouts of America; he was also Mark Twain’s most trusted illustrator. Twain said of Beard’s work: Dan Beard is the only man who can correctly illustrate my writings for…
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Last of the Radical Filmmakers
The Believer blog has a great interview with avant-garde filmmaker Nina Menkes. Menkes provides some insight into her creative process, as well as her take on being a feminist filmmaker: I am surely a feminist filmmaker, but not because I…
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Takin’ It to the Tweets
Last Friday, the CIA officially joined Twitter with a joke: We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet. But the New York Review of Books wasn’t laughing. The highly respected literary journal staged a protest, rapidly…
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A Book by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet
Whether or not we like the contents, most of us agree: books smell pretty good. (For the truly devoted, there’s even a paper-scented perfume you can wear.) The chemistry blog Compound Interest explores what exactly makes books smell so good…