A Brief History of the Future: On James Gleick’s Time Travel: A History
Gleick’s hybrid of history, literary criticism, theoretical physics, and philosophical meditation is itself a time-jumping, head-tripping odyssey.
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Ward Farnsworth Doesn’t Mess Around: On ‘Classical English Metaphor’
For those who venture into Farnsworth’s level-headed take on murky abstractions, the benefits will be less far-reaching, less comprehensively employable, but they will also be richer, longer-lasting, and as demystifying and powerful as the strongest metaphors.
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The Failed Mechanics of Masculinity: On B.H. Fairchild’s ‘The Blue Buick’
Fairchild was a quiet kid who liked beauty in towns riddled with homophobia, misogyny, and strict yet unspoken notions of masculinity. Fairchild, as a poet, fights against these ideas, yet how many of the people he knew and loved will go with them?
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A Portrait of the Critic as a Young Man: On James Wood’s ‘The Nearest Thing to Life’
'The Nearest Thing to Life' gives us a profound portrait of an inimitable artist.
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Like Father, Like Son: Literary Parentage in Reif Larsen’s ‘I Am Radar’
Larsen acknowledges the great authors who came before him, how their influence on him is undeniable, unavoidable, deep –– but that he is still his own writer, one with formidable gifts and looming ambition.
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Unquote: The Benefits of Excising Quotation Marks
Let's let the voice of our characters sing, come to life –– let their words pop of the page, because they are no longer chained to it.
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All the Dumb Young Literary Stand-Ins: On Arthur Bradford’s ‘Turtleface and Beyond’
These are often stories about young men doing stupid shit, or young men not doing enough good shit, or young men doing good shit in the wrong way.
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The Art of the Final Sentence
For writers, the last sentences aren’t about reader responsibility at all -- it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to stop worrying about what comes next, because nothing does. No more keeping the reader interested, no more wariness over giving the game away. This is the best time for a writer to get real, to depict reality as they see it, without compromises, without fear.
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The Art of the Chapter
You want to know how weird and deep my rabbit hole goes? I’ve developed what I’ll call an eccentricity about chapters.
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To Make Us Feel Less Alone: On ‘The David Foster Wallace Reader’
Wallace’s complex mind and neurotic tendencies found their most successful (i.e. accessible and popular) outlet in nonfiction, and that although history may remember his novels and stories as his most important contributions to literature, his nonfiction is more successful in doing what he aimed to do with literature and more representative of who he was as a person and a writer.
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Literature Isn’t a Religion, It’s a Country: On Azar Nafisi’s ‘The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books’
If you’re looking for an easy road map to human ethics, literature ain’t the place for you.
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The Art of Dialogue: A Symposium
Everybody, shut up. Now, I realize that a group of writers like yourselves would jump all over the chance to point out the irony of me beginning a symposium on dialogue by telling everyone to shut up, but I don’t want to hear it, okay? Let’s just get this over with. Jane Smiley, let’s begin with you.
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The Art of “The Novel”
I am going to try to convince you that The Novel is one of the most important works of both literary history and criticism to be published in the last decade.
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The Art of Homage
Homage is a way of acknowledging our forbearers, to celebrate where we came from by updating the past, calling back to it, poking fun at it, challenging it, embracing it, adoring it.
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The Art of Close Writing
Close writing really is an amazing thing. Consider that this essay right now has been narrated in the third person, and yet there is no question as to what Clark's opinions are.
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The Art of the Epigraph
I didn't have a great need to write that story, but the quote would have fit it so perfectly I actually have an unfinished draft somewhere in my discarded Word documents.
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When It Becomes Clear What It Is That They Will Be Doing, I Will Be Very Interested in Their Doings: On The Best of McSweeney’s
The Best of McSweeney’s is a triumph, not only as a stand-alone book, but also (and especially) as a testament to the power of the short story, the essay, the experiment. A tribute, too, to the power of one person’s vision, proof that writers can influence the world outside the borders of their prose.
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