Features & Reviews
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The Story and the Truth: Elaine Hsieh Chou’s Disorientation
. . . a scathing, satirical campus novel about academia, orientalism, the Western commodification of Asian cultures, and the lengths to which institutions will go to protect their reputations and their darlings.
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We’re more powerful if we’re not so embroiled in illusion: A Conversation with Irene Silt
Love is just extremely terrifying and kind of abysmal.
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How to Write an Honest Memoir: A Conversation with Evette Dionne
I don’t ever do anything from a place of fear—which is an odd place for me to be in because I have anxiety—but I have to [step into places of discomfort] because that’s where growth happens. If you’re comfortable, you’re…
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The Claws That Type the Text: Ander Monson’s Predator: A Memoir, a Movie, an Obsession
Rather than saying, Fuck it, and remaining stagnant in the face of cultural horrors, Monson suggests readers start with the marginalia. Exhaust all possibilities. Carve a new path where sweeping prescriptions fail to stick.
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A Conversation with Adam Rosen about anthologies and the worst movie ever made
I was looking for people who had something to say beyond This is the dumbest movie of all time.
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SKETCH BOOK REVIEWS: Three Faves
A roundup of great books that didn’t make it into Sketch Book Reviews this year
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A World Where We Are Known and Loved: Shelley Wong’s As She Appears
to be seen is not the same thing as being known
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A joyful expression of femininity and play: Talking dolls with Maria Teresa Hart
In which one Samantha interviews another.
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Take Your Divagations Seriously: Geoff Dyer’s The Last Days of Roger Federer
The Last Days . . . has nothing much to do with tennis or with Roger Federer, who appears sparingly in these pages . . . [nor is it] “intended to be a comprehensive study of last things, or of…
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The Answers Usually Come from Somewhere Unexpected: An Interview with Emma Winsor Wood
If you go to a poetry reading, the aphoristic moments are usually where the audience lets out a collective “hmmm” or “ahhh”—almost before the poet has finished the sentence.
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American Mothers are Screaming: A conversation with Jessica Grose
I think people want more unstressed time with their kids. I think so much of the time we are spending with our kids we are exhausted, and we have all this other stuff on our minds that’s mentally draining, physically…
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The Art of Attention: Jill Christman’s If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays
“If you really want to look at someone, then your only option is to look at yourself, squarely and deeply.”