Features & Reviews
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Scrawl Girl
What does it mean to draw outside the lines? Allison Benis White sketches it out in Self-Portrait with Crayon.
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That Old Philogelos—Up To His Old Tricks!
Classicist Mary Beard has discovered a joke book from the 4th century AD, filled with rib-ticklers from the late Roman Empire. Just like today, the old egghead is a source of tremendous humor, along with other frequently targeted figures of…
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Show Your Work!
Matthew Zapruder proposes we meet the current explosion of variety coursing through contemporary poetry head-on with a new kind of criticism. Zapruder wants critics to talk a little less about what the poem said and a little more about how…
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The Ground Beneath Their Feet
Aaron Gwyn’s novel describes a world in which people can fall through the surface of the earth and be snatched by a mythological creature, never to be heard from again.
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Mr. J.D.
Once again a journalist turns up at J.D. Salinger’s house, and once again gets turned away. In Japan — not being in easy driving distance of Cornish, NH — they must turn to Blankey Jet City’s song “Salinger,” with its…
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American Short Stories
A.O. Scott gives a nice shout out to the craft of American short stories in the New York Times, particularly praising, Flannery O’Connor, John Cheever, and Donald Barthelme. For more on Cheever, Slate ran a review of his newest biography.…
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Hansi, the Girl Who Loved the Swastika
Spire Christian Comics was an old comics company that, like many other publishers (including Marvel, in its early years), was distributed and printed by a larger company. Archie Comics, the publisher that got famous off of superheroes like The Shield…
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Joey Nicoletti: A Poem I Love
I am smitten with Milton Kessler’s “Comma of God.” It’s a poem of great texture: a prayer, a chant, an adroit benediction. Perhaps most of all, it’s a testament to a fully lived life; an edifice of gratitude for having…
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Trevor Paglen reveals the “Blank Spots on the Map”
Trevor Paglen may be familiar for his 2008 appearance on The Colbert Report, where he talked about his book I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to be Destroyed By Me, a picture book of military unit patches…