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Wonder Twin Titles, Activate!

Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want It, by Maile Meloy
Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever, by Justin Taylor

Aren’t these titles strangely similar?

12 thoughts on “Wonder Twin Titles, Activate!

  1. Is it their use of repetition, specifically polyptoton? And that the two phrases are divided by an auxiliary verb?

    How about these less interesting mirroring titles?

    Gass’s In the Heart of the Heart of the Country
    Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country

    Letter to His Father, by Franz Kafka
    Letters to Wendy’s, by Joe Wenderoth

    The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares
    The Invention of Solitude, by Paul Auster

    The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros
    The House on the Hill, by Cesare Pavese

    First Love, by Samuel Beckett
    First Love, by Ivan Turgenev

    Goodbye, Columbus, by Philip Roth
    Goodbye, Madagascar, by Jennifer Spiegel

    In Praise of Shadows, by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
    In Praise of the Stepmother, by Mario Vargas Llosa

  2. “People Like That Are the Only People Here” – Lorrie Moore

    “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” – Carver

    1. Ha!

      So what’s the literary equivalent to Fiona Apple’s album title “When the pawn hits the conflicts he thinks like a king
      What he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight
      And he’ll win the whole thing ‘fore he enters the ring
      There’s no body to batter when your mind is your might
      So when you go solo, you hold your own hand
      And remember that depth is the greatest of heights
      And if you know where you stand, then you know where to land
      And if you fall it won’t matter, cuz you’ll know that you’re right”?

  3. I think there a lot of short-sentence-length titles out there right now:

    Also:

    No One Belongs Here More Than You – Miranda July
    I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl – Karyna McGlynn
    Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine – Ben Tanzer

    There’s a lot more – but those are the one’s I just thought of in a second. One of the above is more threatening than the others. Can you tell which?

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