francine prose
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The Lobster, or a Critique of Circe’s New Dating App
In a world where no romantic attachment meant you were turned into an animal, which creature would your lonely self choose? Francine Prose, author of Bullyville, Blue Angels, and many others, writes about the strange, wholly imagined parallel worlds of…
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The Last Book I Loved: Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932
What makes a person who they are? Is evil born or made?
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The Rumpus Interview with Brian Shawver
Author Brian Shawver talks about his new book, Danger on the Page, his novel Aftermath, MFA programs, and why it’s a good thing that writing never stops being hard work.
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Canon Cannon
Begone, Wordsworth! The Times‘s Sunday Book Review brought in acclaimed writers James Parker and Francine Prose to answer the question: who should be kicked out of the literary canon? They responded by offering some lovely (or heartbreaking) discussion on Samuel Taylor…
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Bechdel on Broadway
Part of what’s fascinating about the Broadway adaptation, with its script and lyrics by Lisa Kron and music by Jeanine Tesori, is how closely it adheres to the outline and details of Bechdel’s story—yet so differs from the book that…
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Rushdie Slams Withdrawn PEN Panelists
PEN America announced on Sunday their intention to honor Charlie Hebdo’s surviving staff with the Freedom of Expression Courage award at their May 5 Gala. The novelists Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, and Taiye Selasi…
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Hollywood History and the Truth
In The New York Review of Books, Francine Prose analyzes “the recent controversies about the accuracy of ‘historical’ films” in Hollywood, concluding that maybe “the real source of controversy isn’t the question of truth in historical films, but rather the…
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Literary Duets
At The Millions, Nick Ripatrazone reviews BOMB Magazine’s “The Author Interviews,” “a collection of 35 interviews spanning 30 years.” He meditates on the competing definitions and modes, concluding he is “drawn” to interviews not “for their performative components” but for how…
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Your E-Reader is Watching You
I wonder if readers of Fifty Shades of Grey will now feel uneasy knowing that someone knows exactly which scenes they return to, and reread over and over? As Francine Prose writes over at the New York Review of Books,…
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Exploring the “Russian Soul”
For the New York Times, Francine Prose and Benjamin Moser share their experiences reading 19th century Russian literature. While Prose shows an appreciation for the timeless themes of Tolstoy and Gogol, Moser contends that what makes 19th century Russian writers distinctive is the…
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Life-Changing Books
In the latest installment of “Bookends” at the New York Times, Leslie Jamison and Francine Prose discuss whether a book could ever change a reader’s life in a negative way. While Jamison thinks that “[n]ovels might not make us worse, but…