Scars That Never Fade: On Colson Whitehead’s ‘The Underground Railroad’
How can a country ever put such a period behind it? Putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill won’t change the fact that American money was used to purchase people.
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Haunting Us Still: W.G. Sebald’s A Place in the Country
What the book may lack in personal revelations about the author, it makes up for with a better understanding of his process.
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The Darkness is Deep Indeed: On Javier Marías’s The Infatuations
Javier Marías may be the only significant working writer to also be a king. As the sovereign of Redonda, Marías is the honorary monarch. His two-decade reign has nearly entirely consisted of bestowing titles on various artists -- John Ashbery is the Duke of Convexo, for example -- as part of an effort at tongue-in-cheek recognition.
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Rural Prisons: Hamlin Garland’s Stories of the American Midwest
Downtrodden and oppressed women resonate in Main-Travelled Roads. There are no easy solutions for these characters, and certainly no political ones.
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