Your Favorite Writer’s Favorite Writer: On Natalia Ginzburg’s Valentino & Sagittarius
I remembered almost nothing of the narrators apart from their existence. They existed for me as wallpaper.Still, when a friend said the same to me, I became defensive.
As the narrator . . . identifies increasingly with their tools, the desert feels more and more like a living being, breathing sand outside its original bounds, germinating and folding blades of grass, unwilling to be captive to . . . humans.
Each artist has certain currents—underground rivers, let’s imagine—they are attuned to, nourished by or responding to, in communion with. And I think we are each trying to speak in that true/inner/hidden language to others and to the world.
Telling your story doesn’t necessarily mean succumbing to the hefty weight of narrativization . . . reality is messy and incoherent—why not make stories that way?
What’s important about Bratton’s rendering of sex isn’t just that it’s true to life, but that it paints a complex portrait of a person with a dark sexual history.
To Hell With Poets – Baqytgul Sarmekova
Each story is narrated from a third person ranging from a distant voice to a very close omniscient one . . . Consistent, however, is each character on a journey with no end.
I became very interested in how . . . linguistic dynamics played out, and how they related to power, and who had dominance in any given discourse.
Violent Faculties – Charlene Elsby
Sade’s aristocratic libertines were poised to benefit from all their cruelty, but Elsby’s depiction of this former professor’s cruelty reveals a sort of purposeless, indifferent violence. Cruelty becomes regularized in this world, and that is partly why it is so sickening.
Log Off: Why Posting and Politics (Almost) Never Mix – Katherine Cross
Can people create meaningful change by posting? Is Twitter bad for politics?
No One Knows Their Blood Type (Excerpt)
Lately I’ve stopped looking at my father; his body is just another part of the room now, like the bed, the chair, and the window onto the maternity ward.