Category Archives: Literature

The Rapid-Response Novel

Giles Harvey writes in the New York Review of Books: * Over the past decade, but especially since the epochal events of 2016, a growing number of writers have been running a sort of stress test on the form, stuffing … Continue reading

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Brave New World (8-15-21)

Here are my notes on the book: * At the end of the book, I had nothing. I had no comments. I had no reactions. I didn’t laugh or cry or have any emotional or intellectual reaction to the book. … Continue reading

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‘The Cat Person debate shows how fiction writers use real life does matter’

From The Guardian: “It was Graham Greene who wrote that every writer has a splinter of ice in their heart. I think he was right: you have to have it, otherwise you would spend all your time worrying about the … Continue reading

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The Guardian: ‘It is obscene’: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie pens blistering essay against social media sanctimony

The Guardian article. From ChimaManda.com: In certain young people today like these two from my writing workshop, I notice what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never give; a massive … Continue reading

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Dreams and Anna Karenina

Janet Malcolm writes: * Tolstoy was obviously well acquainted with the guard who stops us at the border of sleep and awakening and confiscates the brilliant, dangerous spoils of our nighttime creations. The capacity to recreate these fictions in the … Continue reading

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