Category Archives: Literature

Senses of Style By Jeff Dolven (2017)

Here are some highlights: * Nonetheless the claim there are only interpretations is as flattening as the claim style is everything… * Style holds things together, things and people, schools and movements and periods. It makes us see wholes where … Continue reading

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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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