The Last Book I Loved: The Wordy Shipmates
I fall in love pretty easily, so for me right now it’s Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates, which is her take on John Winthrop, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson of…
Features & Reviews
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Bookapocalypse
Thousands scramble for free books after Amazon used book vender abandons warheouse. There’s really some beautiful photography here, in addition to the many readings one could make of the article.
Television, Starring John Cheever and John Updike
This has been a week of exhuming dead writers. First the hallelujahs for the news of David Foster Wallace’s forthcoming unfinished novel, now a newly unburied video of Cheever and…
Eric Blair, National Treasure?
Julian Barnes weighs in on three collections of George Orwell’s work— Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays, compiled and with an introduction by George Packer; All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays,…
The Call For Collaboration
It would be nice to think there was another model, one that could inspire a pair of young, edgy writers to walk along lonely railroad tracks, kicking rocks and running…
The Shorty Q & A with Larry Smith
Larry Smith of SMITH Magazine keyed into the popularity and resonance of short, pithy bios even before “tweet” made its way firmly into the vernacular.
The Garden of Eden
Pretty quietly back in 1994 archaeologists found huge stone carvings buried in Turkey. About the size of the boulders at Stonehenge, these unique rocks are more than 10,000 year older…
Once the Shore: The Rumpus Review
When I first encountered Paul Yoon’s story, “Once the Shore,” the opening piece in Best American Short Stories 2006, I felt the rush of a new discovery. In the first…
How Not to Lie
Alexei Tsvetkov calls Prague “a place where you wait for something to happen.” It’s from there he wrote this dispatch on the occasion of his recent (somewhat permanent) departure. It’s…
Kindle: Definition
From Merriam-Webster: Main Entry: kin·dle Pronunciation: \ˈkin-dəl\ Function: verb Etymology: Middle English, probably modification of Old Norse kynda; akin to Old High German cuntesal fire Date: 13th century Definition (1):…
The Mercy Papers: A Memoir of Three Weeks
It’s a tricky thing, a memoir of a death: you know how it’s going to end. The challenge for the writer (not only with regard to the conclusion) is making…
Is the Internet Ruining Our Lives?
We’re distracted, our attention is shot, we are under surveillance, and we don’t care! We like being linked and friended by strangers who may or may not be who they say they are.