A Fire-Proof Box is a porous work, languages overlapped, breathing, an English translation that manages to capture the icy weight of classically “Russian” sensibilities.
The most frustrating part of not being able to keep quiet about the willful ways in which people are perfectly happy to enable the status quo is that when you…
I first heard of Claire Bidwell Smith several years ago through the online literary collective The Nervous Breakdown, where Claire is something of a folkloric figure.
The book’s strongest moments are often its quietest, as when the complexity of the speaker’s engagement with himself and the world is repulsed or rerouted by automatic prompts and alienation.
I call James McMurtry late one morning when I’m visiting Austin, Texas. By now, I’ve seen him play three times, in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and California, and I’m always struck by…