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From Russia with Love
Elif Batuman offers a rogue’s gallery of Russian writers, scholars, and literary characters—the only oddball missing is herself.Initially, I was attracted to Elif Batuman’s The Possessed because I...
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You Know Nothing of My Work!
Douglas Coupland’s new biography of Marshall McLuhan bends the rules of the medium—but what, exactly, is the message? Recently, I chanced upon David Propson’s problematic review of Douglas Coupland’s...
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THE BLURB #21: This Is Your Brain—on Books, on Screens
Will the ironies that plague the demise of print never end? Just as neuroscience arrives to explain how the brain evolved our reading and writing abilities, which took their furthest leap forward with...
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The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning
In her new book, The Art of Cruelty, Maggie Nelson draws upon a wide range of work (from Diane Arbus to Brian Evenson to name just two) as she grapples with what cruelty means and how its...
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Write What You Don’t Know
Ann Beattie’s collagist new novel, Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life, questions the inherent value of fiction.Had you not read much of Ann Beattie’s fiction—which is the case with me, just a few...
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Zona, by Geoff Dyer
To appreciate Zona, Geoff Dyer’s twelfth book, you’ll need to watch the Andrei Tarkovsky film, Stalker, among the most treasured and troubling movies in the history of cinema. If you’ve never seen it,...
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“How Literature Saved My Life,” by David Shields
Two nights ago, I, a freelance writer, dreamt about an editor who paid me $500 in advance for a new piece, sight unseen, topic my choice. I was fresh out of ideas, so I asked him for one. Write, he...
View ArticleFrom Russia with Love
Elif Batuman offers a rogue’s gallery of Russian writers, scholars, and literary characters—the only oddball missing is herself. Initially, I was attracted to Elif Batuman’s The Possessed because I...
View ArticleYou Know Nothing of My Work!
Douglas Coupland’s new biography of Marshall McLuhan bends the rules of the medium—but what, exactly, is the message? Recently, I chanced upon David Propson’s problematic review of Douglas Coupland’s...
View ArticleTHE BLURB #21: This Is Your Brain—on Books, on Screens
Will the ironies that plague the demise of print never end? Just as neuroscience arrives to explain how the brain evolved our reading and writing abilities, which took their furthest leap forward with...
View ArticleThe Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning
Permit me, briefly, a naiveté. Had I thought about art and cruelty together, I would have said, yes, writers, painters, filmmakers depict a good deal of cruelty: Goya, Kafka, Tarantino, not to mention...
View ArticleWrite What You Don’t Know
Ann Beattie’s collagist new novel, Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life, questions the inherent value of fiction. Had you not read much of Ann Beattie’s fiction—which is the case with me, just a few...
View ArticleZona, by Geoff Dyer
To appreciate Zona, Geoff Dyer’s twelfth book, you’ll need to watch the Andrei Tarkovsky film, Stalker, among the most treasured and troubling movies in the history of cinema. If you’ve never seen it,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“How Literature Saved My Life,” by David Shields
Two nights ago, I, a freelance writer, dreamt about an editor who paid me $500 in advance for a new piece, sight unseen, topic my choice. I was fresh out of ideas, so I asked him for one. Write, he...
View ArticleThe Anger of Memory: Teju Cole’s Tremor
In a By the Book chat with the New York Times in 2014, writer Teju Cole was asked to describe a favorite or underrated writer. Citing Lydia Davis and Anne Carson as brilliant and ignored, he then...
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