“They are both popular and literary and seem to have no problem standing with a foot in each category.” For The Paris Review, our own Adam O’Fallon Price writes about the “unambiguous sophistication” of Curtis Sittenfeld‘s writing—which is often regulated to the world of “chick lit”—and her new short story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It. (Read our interview with Sittenfeld.)
You Think It, She’ll Write It
“The truth of poetry is not the truth of history”
Philip Levine is the current US Poet Laureate, and that’s great, but wouldn’t we all rather live in this alternate world fashioned by The Onion?
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Great American Label
“Almost as soon as the concept of the Great American Novel was invented, in the nation-building years after the Civil War, Buell finds it being mocked, noting that one observer dryly put it into the same category as ‘other great American things such as the great American sewing-machine, the great American public school, and the great American sleeping-car.’ It was enough of a cliché by 1880 for Henry James to refer to it with the acronym ‘GAN,’ which Buell employs throughout his book.” On the reigning gold standard for quality in American fiction. (Related: we asked nine experts their picks for the best American novel.)
A New Quarterly Conversation
Another quarter, another Quarterly Conversation. Check out reviews of Kirsty Gunn’s “incantatory prose” in The Big Music, an interview with Lars Iyer, and much more.
Nouveau Riche
“When Michael reads in one of the society columns that are hilariously reprinted here, misspellings and all, that Astrid’s jewels aren’t blingy enough, he flies into a fury of inadequacy. This leads him to try to buy one of Singapore’s rarest architectural masterpieces and turn its ground floor into a museum for his car collection, which includes a car from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; fortunately, his offer is turned down.” On Kevin Kwan’s China Rich Girlfriend.
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Why Pick One?
Does what you read affect your sex life? Does it help you come of age? Is it therapeutic?
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Talking Truth to Power
“Steinem welcomed them all—the rich, the celebrities, the climbers for the cause. She was a radical but, consciously, never an outsider. She enjoyed the world where she plied her trade as an entrepreneur of social change, and, with her mouth spray at hand, she had long since mastered the subterfuges of talking truth to power. You could call it consciousness-raising—on a wider canvas.” The New Yorker profiles Gloria Steinem in anticipation of her latest release, My Life on the Road.
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