Who’s Afraid of Theory?

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The conclusion among many folks is that Theory is a kind of philosophical Mad Libs disappearing up its own ass, accountable to nobody but itself and the departments that coddle it.
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On Obscenity and Literature

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Like any grimoire or incantation, obscenity can be used to liberate and to oppress, to free and to enslave, to bring down those in power but also to froth a crowd into the most hideous paroxysms of fascistic violence.
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Secrets That Hold Us

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How could we have lived so long, on an island as small as Jamaica, without knowing our mother's mother still lived?
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Ten Ways to Save the World

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If imagining yourself as the messiah could get you decapitated by the 10th century Abbasids, then in 20th-century Michigan it only got you institutionalized.
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A Fraternity of Dreamers

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The anxiety that libraries can sometimes give me is of a cosmic nature, for something ineffable affects my sense of self when I realize that the majority of human interaction, expression, and creativity shall forever be unavailable to me.
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Stories in Formaldehyde: The Strange Pleasures of Taxonomizing Plot

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There is something to be said about the cool rectilinear logic that claims any story can be stripped down to its raw schematics.
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Letter from Wartime

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What I’m writing about is what it feels like to be living through the blood-red dusk of a nation.
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How ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ Saved My Life

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Adams's way of viewing the galaxy was so innately appealing to me that I came to adopt it as my own, meeting the universe with my own absurdity whenever possible.
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The Time My Grandma Was in ‘Playboy’

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Playboy showcased many celebrated writers: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Joyce Carol Oates, Ursula K. Le Guin, John Updike, and Vladimir Nabokov. Had it showcased Corrine Hutner Wittenberg, too?
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My First Year as a Mother, I Only Read Women Authors. Here’s What I Learned.

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I wanted to find inspiration and understanding in the voices of other women. It was reductive to imagine other women were the solution, but I craved reductive thinking. I just wanted things to be simple, and to work.
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Please! Hold Off on That Novel Coronavirus Novel!

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Many people liken quarantine to prison or war, yet there are salutary rewards to be found in such solitary activities as braiding your own hair, learning to play piano, watching birds, and photographing your daughters.
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By Myself but Keeping Company with Lauren Bacall

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Herein lies Bacall’s secret to a full and meaningful life: She was always in it for the love, the experience, the richness; the aliveness of the here and now, the people who animate the work.
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On Verisimilitude

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My husband tells me he feels reassured by the way the book preserves the memory of his father. I never intended my novel to carry this weight, but I am glad for it now.
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When I Mean I

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Maybe you think that the very act of writing distorts the self by forcing it into and through generic and linguistic conventions incompatible with the experience of selfhood as you know it.
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On Isolation and Literature

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Isolation is not a medium for literature, nor is it a method of creating literature; it is the very substance of literature itself.
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Letter from the Other Shore

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Right now, I’m adhering to that old mantra of “One Day at a Time” and that seems to work while I’m white-knuckling it through the apocalypse.
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The Necessary Staying Put: Beckett and Social Distancing

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In this germ-conscious era, we must make brief mention of Molloy’s stone sucking. I won’t linger on his intricate, obsessive-compulsive ritual, but suffice it to say the cavalier use of saliva would give Dr. Anthony Fauci a panic attack.
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How to Survive the End of the World with Jenny Offill

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I realize this is what the book is about: everyday living during the end of the world. The futility, the impossibility, the absurdity of trying to keep people alive, trying to keep them safe.
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