Crimean Rites
It’s February 4, 1937. The poet Osip Mandelstam is in Voronezh, a provincial city deep in the Russian steppe. He has one year left to live.
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Tintin and the Death Drive: Tom McCarthy’s C
Since McCarthy has devoted an entire, brilliant work of criticism to the argument that we should treat the Tintin books as classics of world literature, it’s tempting to imagine C as recast by Hergé.
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Snake Meat and Reefer: Horacio Castellanos Moya
You can’t get a word in edgewise so you just sip your beer or your wine and wonder if it’s the cocaine talking or something they got from their psychiatrist. But you are enjoying yourself, because however one-sided it is, they’re supplying everything a good conversation needs – sex, secrets, politics, and death, and because they’re funny, really funny, even as they’re being morbid or petty or paranoid.
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The Aira Effect
The effect of all the detail and incident César Aira can offer on such a small canvas is vertiginous, like reading an epic poem etched on a grain of sand.
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