by Tom LeClair

Making Literature Now – Amy Hungerford

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Hungerford complains about the power of the commercial market to make reputations, but doesn’t “interrogate,” as professors say, her own institutional power.

Orthokostá – Thanassis Valtinos

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If we lack for now the Great Syrian Novel, we may have to make do with Orthokostá and our ability to extrapolate from the Mediterranean country that gave us the word “chaos” to a more easterly Mediterranean country that now manifests it.

Flint and the Museum of Lead

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Lead leaches. From mines to minds, from metal to metaphor.

City on Fire – Garth Risk Hallberg

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Hallberg has at least attempted the Great New York Novel, but Hallberg has placed too much trust in the throw-weight of his subject and his pages, so the “great” is less qualitative than quantitative.

How to Exploit a Dead Writer

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The reality of David Foster Wallace’s life is minimized, if not quite evaded, by what the screenwriter and director omit or massage to keep The End of the Tour on a predictable narrative arc and a comfortable, mostly comic plane.