We witness a character endeavoring to recreate the past in the vast country of the present, knowing all along that it is futile. But why should futility be discouraging?
My First Suicide – Jerzy Pilch
It’s hard not to feel drawn into a unity with Pilch’s protagonist, even if you’ve never felt compelled to imagine unbuttoning Anna Karenina’s corset.
A Stately, Plump Bronze Medalist: Oliver St. John Gogarty and the Olympic Art Competitions
Oliver St. John Gogarty, the real Buck Mulligan, received a bronze medal in “mixed literature.” Surprised? An Olympic medal for literature?
The Oulipo has no interest in telling you which constraints you should focus on, or even that you should focus on constraints at all.
Reticence – Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Toussaint’s novels are filled with darkness and light, both of which are consumed, inevitably, by a gray fog.
What counts as literature, for me, is what has the capacity to transmit and to be received.