Tag: literature

Columns

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.

The Ovid of Loserdom

J.W. McCormack

January 22, 2018

In his second and perhaps final story collection, the author of Jesus' Son glimpses an out-of-reach infinity.

The Story of a Face

J.W. McCormack

January 03, 2018

We are trying to read the story of a teenage girl, but Marguerite Duras is trying to tell us something else.

Phony War, Phony Peace

Ryan Ruby

November 21, 2017

Julien Gracq's "Balcony in the Forest" (1958) wonders whether we see too many futures at once.

Mind Out of Time

Siddhartha Deb

August 15, 2017

The work of Urdu writer Naiyer Masud depicts a world of fading aristocrats and the drifting poor.

Austerity Gospel

Jonathon Sturgeon

June 21, 2017

If visual and conceptual artists were foundational to the Occupy Wall Street movement, what about novelists?

Minor Character Assassination

Anjum Hasan

June 15, 2017

Most authors who reclaim minor characters from the canon aren’t giving voice to the voiceless—they’re being shallow.

A Poet’s Work

Hanif Abdurraqib

April 07, 2017

While the Black Arts Movement was exploding on the nation’s coasts, Mari Evans was in Indiana . . .

Victor Serge, The Unconquered

William Giraldi

May 25, 2015

Some writers are destined to have two deaths—the first in life, and the second in memory. The lucky ones can be resurrected from that second death by cultural circumstance and the aid of overseeing angels, irked by injustice, believing these Lazaruses should be helped from ...

The Right-Wing Book Market is Dying a Free-Market Death

Jim Newell

March 21, 2014

The free market is a cruel beast, which is something the book publishing industry has been made acutely aware of in the past decade or two. But now, even in one arena where that industry had traditionally been doing well, right-wing conservative political books—as in, books ...