Is there a David Bowie of literature?—such an asinine question, as dumb as asking, “Is there a Virginia Woolf of…
Fifty Gestures of Love, in honor of William Gass (continued)
25 remaining, & here they are, picking up where we left off, with Tolstoy & his disgraced Natasha 26) The…
Your Basic Bore, or “The Literature of Exhaustion”
Look: I read the Bible when I was ten, the whole thing. I don’t remember much. The reading was…
From the Barbaric Heart: Kakutani: Death Star
This is Part 2 of my hit job on the most important literary critic in these theoretically United States. It’s…
Stanley Elkin, Ghosting Through Boston, Beautifully
A reminiscence of Stanley Elkin & a one-on-one workshop session I was lucky enough to have.
Announcing the Book Club Schedule!
The votes are in, and the winner of the poll for the first book to be discussed in the Big…
Over Forty Writers Over Forty to Watch
Writing the title of this post actually felt very silly; it seems such an arbitrary way of gathering a list…
A Sentence About a Sentence I Love, by John Domini
“And more than once, in their middle years, she and King Shahryar had pretended in bed that her life was…
The Dominant, ctd.
Update: If a blog post can ever be said to be in honor of anyone, then consider this one in…
Tiny Shocks Revisited (A Continuing Criticism of James Wood’s How Fiction Works)
Earlier today John pointed toward Nigel Beale’s cleverly-titled criticism of my post “Tiny Shocks: Uncovering the Reductive Plot of James…