Labatut’s most horrific writing depicts the achievements born from humanity’s weakness. . . . It’s horrifying because it’s true; it’s horrifying because it took immense effort, achievement, and ingenuity to make it so.
Oh, the things that can only be whispered sideways to a knowing colleague, or thought privately in the dungeon of the mind. The human psyche, whether on the clock or off, becomes a room of funhouse mirrors facing external animus and internal self-loathing into infinity. In short: work is a drag.
Nefer, the teenage protagonist of the slim, classic Argentine novel January, first published in 1958, is pregnant and doesn’t want to be.
[TW: sexual violence]
What Lindo offers is not necessarily “forgiveness”—for her father, or for anyone else—but rather the privilege of being faithfully and thoroughly observed.
For Ravn, the pregnant body becomes a microcosmic environment tensely defending itself against the violent onslaught of the global conditions of capitalism.
Dayswork – Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel
DAYSWORK is suspicious of the way we talk about authors, authorship, and authorial collaboration: Whose labor is recognized, and whose is elided?
The Men Can’t Be Saved – Ben Purkert
Just like the professions of advertising and commerce, perhaps even preaching, these men distort reality, create false versions of themselves to convince an audience they are functioning successfully.
[Virginia] never imagined that her ideal lover could be a monster, especially not of her own creation.
Deceit, Gallardo implies here in her stunningly economical prose, does not originate in the individual act of hiding a pregnancy, but in the collective act of condemning a woman to gestate one in secret dread.
Idlewild – James Frankie Thomas
Teenagers . . . Are they interesting, or just irritating?