The Blurb
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THE BLURB #21: This Is Your Brain—on Books, on Screens
After just five hundred years of movable type and the Enlightenment it begat, we are blinded by how brief our dwelling in the kingdom of print turned out to be.
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The Blurb #20: Joy Is a Job
I, too, want to feel a buzz, but I have no illusions. It takes effort. Reading good books requires discipline.
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THE BLURB #19: The Complete Thing
“As those early days blurred into weeks, I watched my newborn son losing weight. How could it be that we did not know how to feed our son? Where was our midwife now? Why, in the middle of this enormous…
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THE BLURB #18: The Long Haul
Though I have doubted my talent, I’ve never doubted my conviction that this was the path I had to be on. Writing is like my Siamese twin: freakish, alive, weighty, uncanny. Were we to be separated, I doubt that I…
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THE BLURB #17: The Poet Never Affirmeth
Are there rules that govern the representation of the “real world” in fiction? How much should fiction writers be allowed to misrepresent history before being called out for it?
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THE BLURB #16: Hungrier, More Successful, a Bit Ruthless
A review of David Goodwillie’s American Subversive that veers off into some really important and complicated and basically unanswerable questions about literature, literary reviews, overstimulation, secret weapons, and 21st century life.
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THE BLURB #15: The Monster Impulse
The panic that pervades these stories arises because in our real, human world there is too much cause for fear and worry. Who, exactly, is responsible for the deteriorating environment? What, precisely, causes terrorism? Enter the bugbears and scapegoats.
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The Blurb #14: The Land of Underwater Birds
What makes a good title? The Great Gatsby is one for the ages—but it wasn’t Fitzgerald’s idea. He wanted to call his novel Trimalchio in West Egg, which sounds like something Dr. Seuss dreamed up for The Playboy Channel.
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THE BLURB #13: The Anxiety of Influence
Instead of writing this book review, I’ve been pacing around my apartment and slugging absurd quantities of coffee and snarling to myself about slinging postmodern bullshit all over the page.
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The Blurb #12: On Disturbance
The deciders of the Publishers Weekly Best 10 list “ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz.” Which is kind of brilliant in a way. Because everyone knows if you ignore things, you can maybe make those things go…
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The Blurb #11: A Fresh Eye
Why do so many of us, as readers or maybe as a society, assume that originality springs forth out of nothing, although at the same time we understand that every idea, every story, has a precedent?
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The Blurb #10: Managing Writers in the Workplace – A Guide for Employers
Writers are most inspired when they have no time to write, thus employment keeps them writing, and suppresses maladaptive behaviors most of us are happy to read about but don’t want to ever actually see.