Queer, Magicked Reality: A Conversation with JD Scott
JD Scott discusses their new story collection, MOONFLOWER, NIGHTSHADE, ALL THE HOURS OF THE DAY.
...more
Posts Tagged: realism
Alive and Slippery: Talking with Megan Giddings
Megan Giddings discusses her debut novel, LAKEWOOD.
...more
The World of the Book: Talking with Elizabeth McCracken
Elizabeth McCracken discusses her new novel, BOWLAWAY.
...more
When Realism Is Magical
Fabulism is a lot like this purse. It seems to belong to this world, but doesn’t follow all of the rules. It beckons you. It’s off. The more you explore it, the more mystery and power it has. Over at Electric Literature, Melissa Goodrich makes the case for fabulism vs. realism.
...moreThe Invisible Lower Class
Raymond Carver and other “Kmart realists” championed the working class in high-brow literary fiction. But has the realism of the 99% gone out of style? Electric Literature explores.
...moreThe Magical World of Children’s Literature
Over at the Atlantic, Colleen Gillard takes a critical look at the differences between British and American children’s stories. While British stories for children tend to be rooted in fantasy and folklore, she writes, American children’s classics tend to be more grounded in realism. “Each style has its virtues, but the British approach undoubtedly yields the […]
...moreHistory Is Addictive
For Public Books, David Kurnick explores how Elena Ferrante’s attention to history contributes to the addictive nature of her novels and is helping to “revive” realism: The addictive quality of the Neapolitan novels on which everyone agrees may finally derive from their unequaled sensitivity to what it feels like to be in and with history—sometimes in anticipation, […]
...more
Against Realism
What is it Ferrante has that American fiction lacks?
...moreSeeing is (Not) Believing
Does perception provide us with an accurate picture of reality? To what extent is our environment a reflection of our psychological state? UCLA Philosophy Professor Josh Armstrong examines all sorts of thought-provoking questions in his critique of John Searle’s Seeing Things As They Are in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
...moreIrony Genius Vs. Realism Hero
If Franzen is our genius realist, and DFW our genius postmodernist — how might they meld irony and sincerity? In an excerpt over at Salon from his new book, Keep It Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life, Eric G. Wilson talks irony, realism, postmodernism, David Foster Wallace, and Jonathan Franzen.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Laura van den Berg
Author Laura van den Berg talks to the Rumpus about why she thinks America is obsessed with dystopias, the intersection of surrealism and realism in her work, and choosing an ambiguous ending for her new novel, Find Me.
...moreFor Real
Time and again we hear about a new desire for the real, about a realism which is realistic set against an avant-garde which isn’t, and so on. In his new essay over at the London Review of Books, Tom McCarthy looks at the new meanings of terms such as “the real”, “realism” and “reality” within […]
...moreRealism is a Figure of Speech
For the Atlantic’s “By Heart” series, Vikram Chandra discusses the influence of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” highlighting what makes for good “minimalism”: It’s not about what you say. It’s about what you leave out—and the intelligent reader will be able to sense the weight of all that’s been omitted.
...moreThe Devil Finds Work
Combining The Exorcist, New Jersey, and James Baldwin, among other things, Nick Ripatrazone reviews William Giraldi’s new novel, Hold the Dark, at The Millions. He contemplates Giraldi’s place in contemporary Catholic literature, using his fiction, alongside Cormac McCarthy’s and Christopher Beha’s, to draw larger claims on religion, the manifestations of Satan, and realism.
...moreFiction is Fiction
What does “realism” mean, anyway? Over at Ploughshares, Rumpus contributor and Gigantic magazine editor Lincoln Michel discusses the problems of the term “realism” when it comes to literature: I tend to think it is an ill-defined term, not a useful way to think of most fiction, and it spawns some of the worst criticism. “It […]
...moreTHE BLURB #16: Hungrier, More Successful, a Bit Ruthless
A review of David Goodwillie’s American Subversive that veers off into some really important and complicated and basically unanswerable questions about literature, literary reviews, overstimulation, secret weapons, and 21st century life.
...more