A Gripping, Limited Call to Arms: Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments
There are so many happy endings that dystopia and utopia become almost indistinguishable by the novel’s end.
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Posts Tagged: Noah Berlatsky
Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Julie Marie Wade reviews the “solar system” of Kimberly Burwick’s poetry collection, Good Night Brother. The son—or “sun”—in the title “burns everyone and everything it touches.” He/it “has gone the way of the supernova.” This lovable, yet hard-to-love character seduces the reader with the promise of the ineffable. Then, in the Saturday Interview, blogger […]
...moreAlways Read the Comments
Art isn’t just for fans, which means that it’s not just for the knowledgeable, but for passersby as well. Expertise, then, seems an excuse to make everyone talk about the same things in the same way. For the LA Review of Books, Noah Berlatsky writes about ignorant commenters, outsider critics, and elitist experts and argues […]
...moreDangerous Fictions
Hollywood’s sensationalized sex trafficking stories aren’t helping real life victims. Over at Salon, Noah Berlatsky looks at the truth—and the fiction—behind popular trafficking narratives.
...morePoetry Is Useful—Or At Least It Can Be
Poetry is always already revolutionary, then. What it says hardly matters. Poetry is useful because of its useless essence, not because of its individual meaning. Of course, this is nonsense. The way Noah Berlatsky sees it, mainstream culture and poets agree with each other that poetry is useless—it’s just that most people see that as a […]
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