A Year in Reading: Kyle Winkler
The book is a blister. It’s fun to touch, mess with, and you eventually want to see it explode. But when it does, it’s more of a mess than you expected, hurts, and takes a while to heal.
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I’m Suspicious of Empathy: The Millions Interviews Jess Row
The central challenge in fiction is representing other lives and consciousnesses. That’s always the core artistic challenge.
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Ursula K. Le Guin’s Warning: Sci-Fi as Operating Instructions for Life
John Carpenter got it because Ray Nelson got it. John Nada got it. And Le Guin got it. Learn how to invent your own life through language and don’t get made by another.
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Notes on the Art of Rhetoric
Rhetoric is persuasion, and persuasion is seduction. And seduction, in human language, is syntactical.
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Gertrude Stein: Unlikely Comp Teacher
Gertrude Stein’s writing isn’t, on the face of it, a style we’d traditionally encourage in college. But why? Doesn’t it uphold the tenacious inquiry we ask of collegial adults? Doesn’t it allow for play and interest? Doesn’t it make claims?
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Librarian, Distressed
Should libraries buy scads of the hottest bestseller? Or should they break themselves upon the rocks of serious scholarship? Cheeseburger in Paradise or Paradise Lost? Perhaps, somewhere in between?
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