People disappear every day, every year. Some people who disappear are killed. Some people who disappear are never found. This is not simply a matter of being smaller than a pixel.

While I hope that in the sequel the characters devote their lives to some kind of fight for social justice, this story itself, told by a woman, about women, is refreshing.

The culprit is always the invader, even if the invader is a child.

I derive particular satisfaction from delving, in language, into my native Polish core. Having been an exile of many years, this has a particular relevance and poignancy.

While I hope that in the sequel the characters devote their lives to some kind of fight for social justice, this story itself, told by a woman, about women, is refreshing.

Beautiful Soul, in its scrupulous attention to phrase and image in almost every sentence, could be called an attempt to bring the characters and their milieu to life through the vigor of the words on the page.

Following the tracks Carson leaves in the language is a little like getting to be a dog for an hour, for a day.

Telling the truth at this length seems to ask in the starkest way possible why writers turn to fiction to give shape to experience.

I derive particular satisfaction from delving, in language, into my native Polish core. Having been an exile of many years, this has a particular relevance and poignancy.

I actually think this is a highly existential book. For example, I think the ending of the Kardashians section is completely a meditation on death.

In our contemporary, very American idea of nonfiction, there cannot be much permission for a heightened or slippery narrator. And I’m so interested in slipperiness!

Learning how to talk about a novel when it’s not done without killing it is a real skill.

While shoveling scoops of Zen Cheddar into brown paper bags, my boss decried Orville Redenbacher and the other scions of big popcorn. It was easy to empathize with the precarious position of my employer.

Top Gun didn’t win the 1987 People’s Choice Award for its accurate representation of the fragility of human existence. The opposite, actually.

Since the latest crisis in Iraq began, the twin evils of ceaseless sectarian retrenchment and unaccountable governance have been cast in stark relief. Three new books help us make sense of the past eleven years of Iraqi history.

I’m El Salvadoran to an Oaxacan, mulatto to a Haitian squinting her eyes, black to the negro curious about America’s slave past, and white to any Anglo too busy finding what they want to see there. Either I am nobody, or I am a nation.

People disappear every day, every year. Some people who disappear are killed. Some people who disappear are never found. This is not simply a matter of being smaller than a pixel.

The culprit is always the invader, even if the invader is a child.

The facts of Hobby Lobby may not be funny, but the name is a continuation of an American tradition of levity.

Given we can have no real political capital against a company like Google, the only resort is to smash it.