William T. Vollmann Made Me A San Franciscan
One of the more anticipated summer novels of the season is also probably one of the longest, most disturbing and most intimidating: Imperial, William T. Vollman’s mammoth exploration of the…
Features & Reviews
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Somalian Refugee Writers Show the Way
Dadaab is not an oasis. There is no water. In July, food rations are expected to be cut back to 1000 calories a day. The camps are short 38,000 latrines. Every year only twenty students from the entire camp escape to university, the only legitimate way out.
What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going
Five short stories modeled on the works of the old masters make up this smart, witty first collection
The Dead Sea Scrolls of John Dillinger
The tale of a long-lost account of one of America’s most notorious criminals, a struggling ad man, and the contributing editor at Playboy who brought the story to light.
Caleb Crain Elaborates
Surely you remember our note about Caleb Crain’s new book, The Wreck of the Henry Clay? (He noticed us!) If you don’t remember the story, then briefly: it’s a collection of…
“Reading That’s Bad for You,” or: Lessons in Publishing
Ron Charles of the Washington Post reports on Electric Literature, a new bi-monthly magazine that is making lit. mags differently. I’ve noted five lessons about publishing via Electric Literature’s watershed…
Don’t Look Back
A memoir by a critic for The Onion views a troubled youth through the lens of popular culture
Nietzsche and a Reverend Walk into a Blog…
An interesting look at atheism, Nietzsche, the Genealogy of Morals, and religion by Reverend Dr. Giles Fraser (the vicar of Putney). Yes. Reverend. Fraser has been a lecturer in philosophy…
The Last Book I Loved: Hunts In Dreams
In the end, Hunts In Dreams is not a particularly deep book. But it's rich, strange, comforting and sad all at once.
The Story of Encarta
From a New York Times article, published two months ago, about the end of the line for Encarta: “It’s hard to look at the end of the Encarta experiment without the free and…
Henry Green
The Times Literary Supplement has published an edited version of a lecture given by critic and novelist James Wood celebrating English author Henry Green. Henry Green (the nom de plume…
Denying Epiphany
Otremba’s are poems of rigorous looking. In most, a speaker coolly observes a work of art, a person or animal, the poems’ tensions emerging in part from the speaker’s struggle…