GRAVITY fails in a very American way: the lone individual triumphs over nature, energized by her sense of self-value. Americans have a history of bringing our own banalities into space with us.
How to Have Sex with Multiple People at Once in a Chill Way
I decided I wanted to lie down and have people grope me gently, as though I were Marina Abramović performing Rhythm 0, unrated and uncut.
The sequencing of the stories is perfect: Leaving the Sea, in its organic development, teaches the reader how to read it.
The Wellesley Sleepwalker and Robert Walser
While I understand the controversy, I wonder why more people aren’t first worried about the sleepwalker himself. I am, but that’s probably because he reminds me of someone: Robert Walser.
There’s often a sort of mysticism about war, wherein war is supposed to be a kind of ineffable experience that forever separates the veteran from the civilian in ways that cannot be expressed. I’m very wary of those sorts of claims.
Evil will stay evil. This is true in all the Coens’ work, and it may be why their movies always seem linked up with the Fates: because, unlike most of Hollywood movies, they are about life on earth.
There’s naked commerce, and there’s writing with a concept of the reader. That will still be an important difference when we’re all MFAs and the water rises.
How to Talk about Climate Change, Part 3: Who’s Doing the Talking?
We need more women and more people of color to be studying, thinking, writing, and speaking about climate change. The stakes are high.