Features & Reviews
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The Limits of Narrative
In a post on The Guardian (UK), books writer Alison Flood writes about the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series of books and how she would skip ahead to find out whether a prospective choice “led to the treasure in the…
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A Reaction Sauce
Yesterday we linked to Malcolm Gladwell‘s most recent New Yorker essay, “The Courthouse Ring,” in which Gladwell discusses Atticus Finch, Alabama Governer “Big Jim” Folsom, race, and “the limits of Southern liberalism.” Well over at The Millions Garth Risk Hallberg…
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The Last Book I Loved: Inner China
Eva Sjödin’s poem-novel maps in swift, uncanny sentences the dark marvels of being little. I am a sucker for tales of sisters, especially when an older must defend a younger from threats. Left by a stupefied mother to their own…
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Lethem on the “Squandered Promise” of Science Fiction
“In 1973 Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow was awarded the Nebula, the highest honor available in the field once known as “science fiction” — a term now mostly forgotten. “Sorry, just dreaming… [T]hough Gravity’s Rainbow really was nominated for the 1973…
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“Edmund Wilson Regrets That It Is Impossible For Him To:”
Writer and famed literary critic Edmund Wilson wasn’t a fan of giving interviews, doing any kind of editorial work, reading manuscripts, and a number of other things according to a printed response to “a student group asking him to do…
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Take Dead Aim
Aim Straight at the Fountain and Press Vaporize is ambitious and clever. By turns entertaining, fascinating, and charming, it is also monotonous with its adolescent charm and fluorescent insistence.
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Gladwell on Finch
“If Finch were a civil-rights hero, he would be brimming with rage at the unjust verdict. But he isn’t. He’s not Thurgood Marshall looking for racial salvation through the law. He’s Jim Folsom, looking for racial salvation through hearts and…
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Shane Jones: The Last Book I Loved, Jakob Von Gunten
When it comes to books, I believe in love at first sentence. Or maybe first paragraph, but something triggers inside me after reading an opening in a book that really hits home and soon, too soon, I’m falling in love.
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Romantic Poets and Scientists
“A good history of science unreels like the practice of science itself. It wends through a world of experiments until a new reality arises. But the more layered story of that journey is that science is not just a process…
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Green Poetry
Identity Theory‘s Editor-in-Chief, Matt Borondy, has reopened the site to poetry submissions despite their current lack of a poetry editor. (Interested in the volunteer position? You can apply here.) The catch? All poems submitted must be about cheese, scrilla, bread,…
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“Indie Won” (and Thus Is Dead?)
“You see, to the extent that indie meant anything, it was as its root word, independent. It was about seizing the means of production. Independently produced. Aesthetics can be imitated, ethics faked, attitudes mimicked, but large bureaucracies could not possibly…
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Bob Sommer: The Last Book I Loved, You or Someone Like You
The last book I loved was You or Someone Like You by Chandler Burr. A wife and mother living the Beverly Hills good life, Anne leads book groups for directors, screenwriters, producers, and actors. It’s not that she planned to…