January 10, 2023
Interviews aren’t the same as sworn testimony, but they rhyme.
Despite the tantalizing whiff of democracy they seem to exude, museums are not democratic institutions, and never have been.
Museum Pessimism
Have you ever read a stranger narrate their divorce in real time?
Live Free or Die
More novels should invent macroeconomic concepts.
The Everything Snore
I’m an asshole, he says. Don’t you love me?
Radical Narcissist
Shadow and Light
On Deborah Levy
There is something to the way Levy writes that makes one believe she could hear, see, read, or experience anything and say: OK. She offers many interpretations, but few judgments and even fewer conclusions. Her loyalties are total and her betrayals are final.
January 7, 2022
The book sometimes resembles a competent white noise machine.
Why Withdraw?
December 20, 2021
The Everything Snore
Did Eggers mean to write an op-ed, instead of a novel?
December 9, 2021
Against the Automatisms of Trauma
On Mauro Javier Cárdenas
Petty and glorious, revenge personalizes class war.
Once There Was Cinema
In the spirit of what he has called “unhinged generosity” toward the reader, Leyner wants to keep the gravy flowing.
Literary Miniaturist
September 20, 2021
Said of the Sixties
Revising Said’s “out of place” self-image is a project worth pursuing further
Although Brennan’s book prioritizes Said’s English-department dramas, his longstanding anti-militarism is arguably at least as interesting a thread to follow, and one that seems destined to stay interesting longer.
