Michael Berger
-
All I’ve Got Left Are Unread Pages
I like looking at my books and often spend several minutes in the evening running my gaze over them. Most of them I haven’t read but the possibility that I will read them is deeply exciting. (Proust is also excited…
-
No One Belongs Here More Than My Therapist’s Wife
It’s funny, I love Miranda July’s stories but Gordon Haber at Bookslut is insightful about her varied titles: “We Are Vaguely Included seems to show the influence of Miranda July, who has demonstrated talent in numerous genres while consistently formulating…
-
Leafing Through Old Lit Magazines
Sometimes you read a story published almost a hundred years ago in a magazine and you ask yourself, “Would this stand a chance of getting published today?” These sentences are long, tangential and laden with disruptive conjunctions. This narrator is…
-
Anne Carson’s Luminous Fold-Out Elegy Scrap Book
Anne Carson’s new book Nox, at first sight looks like a Vollmann-esque door stopper of at least a thousand pages — until you hold the book and realize that it opens like a treasure box to reveal an accordion-like sprawl…
-
In a World Without Taboos (We’d Just Be Jerking Off)
“When, they ask, are things going to get dirty again? “If you want an answer to that question, ladies and gentlemen, let me propose one. In 2010, the only sex that’s truly dangerous and unbounded is solitary.” In response to…
-
The Unsettling Visions Of Thomas Disch
“Fantasy is not avoidable. The very act of writing fiction is a sin, a lie. One of Disch’s most haunting stories, ‘Getting Into Death,’ is about a writer (one who uses two pseudonyms, at least one of which Disch used…
-
Phoenix Books In San Francisco Turns 25
It’s something of a major milestone to keep an independent, used bookstore running for twenty-five years. And that’s exactly what Phoenix Books in San Francisco is celebrating this month. So as an Anniversary celebration and as part of Noe Valley…
-
Celebrate The Anniversary Of A Wonderful Book
There is nothing quite like reading Little, Big, John Crowley’s epic and elegantly subtle fantasy novel about a New England family and their mystifying relationship with the Fairy World. In language and style and vision, in action that veers from…
-
Stuck Between Two Impossible Libraries
“Every librarian, every book collector, finds him or herself between these two mythical places—the Perfect Library of God and the Infinite Library of Babel, the one transcribed by Jerome, the other by Borges.” At Lapham’s Quarterly, a beautiful meditation on…
-
Staging A Beautiful Apocalypse
Today is the birthday of one of my very favorite living writers, Samuel R. Delany. (I spoke once here before about how I share with Junot Diaz an abiding love for Delany’s work.) All it took for him to become…
-
Book Cover Missed Connections
“Such encounters are becoming increasingly difficult. With a growing number of people turning to Kindles and other electronic readers, and with the Apple iPad arriving on Saturday, it is not always possible to see what others are reading or to…
-
Show Me More Funny Books Please
“But there is another issue, too: one for which you can’t blame publishers or booksellers. The thing about being funny is that it’s really hard. “It’s a lot harder than being serious. It requires wit, grace, agility, sensitivity; it requires…