The People’s Platform – Astra Taylor
When Twitter was banned in Turkey, a popular image showed the Twitter bird’s beak sewn shut, a striking visual conflation of free expression and free enterprise.
It becomes quickly obvious that a lot of this book’s psychic energy is dedicated to a fear of women.
The Blazing World – Siri Hustvedt
If conceptual art often reduces the experience of art to the contemplation of the idea that the art serves to bring into focus, The Blazing World settles for the ideas leading to the ideas leading to the art whose existence must remain imaginary.
Faces in the Crowd – Valeria Luiselli
Aspiring novelist, discerning critic, circular essayist, unabashed prose enthusiast — any one of a writer’s identities, his or her separate selves, has something to say about a great book. Perhaps that, right there, is what makes great books great: engaging all selves at once.
I feel like cardboard. My God! Vice leaves a bitter taste. Virtue brings sweet consolation. Alcohol does me untold damage . . . but I am always so thirsty!
The end takes a grotesque psychological turn that reminds you that environmental devastation, perhaps especially during our fleeting period of history, is as much a psychological issue as any other.
[Niceties] is the rare exception in which the term poetic used to describe fiction isn’t hyperbolic. The stories feel like prose poems because they operate according to associative logic and sonic pleasures.
Women Who Make A Fuss – Isabelle Stengers & Vinciane Despret
What is the value of walking soberly and honorably to the guillotine? Why not cry and scream all the way there?
Every Day Is for the Thief – Teju Cole
As much as I like reading Cole online, the experience of reading his work in a big chunk is sharper and feels more complete.
What Would Lynne Tillman Do? – Lynne Tillman
Fiction writers’ opinions on current events have a basic, ironic appeal: Credentials, qualifications — they have none.