Tag: literature

Columns

The Puppet Master

B.D. McClay

February 22, 2019

In the novels of Stoner author John Williams, everything happens suddenly and signifies nothing.

A Gender Study

Becca Rothfeld

January 28, 2019

A manipulative and self-important man is as ugly and generic as any Marriott.

Apex Predators and Elena Ferrante

G’Ra Asim

November 26, 2018

Once Audrey and I had drifted uneasily to sleep, the bat emerged seemingly from nowhere and soared about the room . . .

Mr. Difficult Jr.

Sho Spaeth

November 14, 2018

The new "William Gass Reader" celebrates the great essayist and philosopher—but it's Gass's fictions that will stand the test of time.

Brutalist Fiction

J.W. McCormack

October 25, 2018

After reading Diane Williams, the classic short story seems like a sprawling black hole.

Motherhood!

Lauren Oyler

May 01, 2018

Sheila Heti's Motherhood is indeed a political novel. But it may not be about motherhood.

The Lunatic Face of Fiction

Olivia Parkes

April 10, 2018

On its fortieth anniversary: Joy Williams's “The Changeling” cracked the carapace of literary realism.

No Mothers, No Daughters

Jessa Crispin

March 27, 2018

Taken from the introduction to How to Suppress Women’s Writing, by Joanna Russ, forthcoming from University of Texas Press. I have a vision. The streets of midtown Manhattan are filled with all of the professors, professional critics, editors, and judges of award panels. They ...

The Book of No Despair

J.W. McCormack

March 26, 2018

Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, a Modernist masterpiece with a new translation, makes hapless animals of us all.

Fucking the Patriarch

Jennifer Schaffer

March 21, 2018

In three new novels, women protagonists overturn the "sage older man seduces beautiful ingénue" trope.

Literature Shrugged

Jonathon Sturgeon

March 02, 2018

We can learn a lot about the literary arts by understanding the long history of hatred of literature.

The Thou of Zadie Smith

Lauren Oyler

February 06, 2018

In Feel Free, Zadie Smith's first nonfiction collection, the author courts the paradox of infinite subjects.