Commentary |
on Lolita in the Afterlife, edited by Jenny Minton Quigley & Nabokov and the Real World: Between Appreciation and Defense by Robert Alter
“It is the writer’s obligation to create an ‘illusion of the largeness of life.’ Which may account for the longevity of Nabokov’s ‘timebomb.’ Lolita will continue to be explosive.”
Commentary |
on The August Trials: The Holocaust and Postwar Justice in Poland by Andrew Kornbluth
“The stories are horrific, yet the twisted rationales and bland denials of accused killers, who usually walked away from court with impunity, are equally chilling.”
Commentary |
“Poets Recommend” — Part II
In the second of several installments of this annual feature, we comment on collections by Sam Cha, Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers and Julia Story
Commentary |
Book Notes: on Echo Tree, the collected short fiction by Henry Dumas & Porcelain: Poem on the Downfall of My City, a sequence of poems by Durs Grünbein
“On May 23, 1968, Dumas attended a rehearsal by Sun Ra and his Arkestra. Later that day, the 34-year old Dumas was shot to death by a New York City transit officer inside the 125th Street Station …”
Commentary |
on Antiquities, a novel by Cynthia Ozick
“This 94-year-old Jewish writer has been delighting and provoking her followers for decades, yet I had a hunch there was something missing from the general consensus about her work.”
Commentary |
on The Mysterious Correspondent, early stories by Marcel Proust
“These stories about the disparities between inner and outer life also demonstrate Proust working through his own restraints of illnesses and failed love.”
Commentary |
Constellating the “Once”: on The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems by Arthur Sze
“Sze continues to ponder the role of sentience in comprehending and translating the prismatic and generative paradoxes of the world …”
Commentary |
on Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry, poems by John Murillo
“Murillo can hold both a .45 and a sunflower in the same hand without flinching … a sincere look at a fully-lived life, and all the things in it.”
Commentary |
on Subdivision, a novel by J. Robert Lennon
“You may call this novel a weird thriller, and also a mystery — not a whodunit? but a whoisit? and a wherearewe? and a whathappened?
Commentary |
on My Heart, autofiction by Semezdin Mehmedinović, translated from the Bosnian by Celia Hawkesworth
“My Heart tell us that increasingly our lives are shaped by griefs no one can escape and thus make us resemble each other.”
Commentary |
“Poets Recommend” — Part I
In the first of several installments of this annual feature, we comment on recent collections by Khaled Mattawa, Rachel Long, and Kimiko Hahn
Commentary |
on Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism by Alex Zamalin
“The utopian socialist movements of the past may have been silent about race, but Black utopians’ dreams have multiplied. We’re in conversation with utopians of all races, of all genders.”
Commentary |
on Mona, a novel by Pola Oloixarac, translated by Adam Morris & The Twilight Zone, a novel by Nona Fernández, translated by Natasha Wimmer
“Like those of fellow Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra and fellow Argentinian author César Aira, Fernández’s and Oloixarac’s inimitable talents are paving the way for a new movement.”
Commentary |
on Bina: A Novel in Warnings, a novel by Anakana Schofield
“Aside from disclosing her discomforts, Bina presents to us an unchanging, unimprovable, unfair human condition. She says, “All over this country, there are people waking up day by day beside people they are disappointed to discover aren’t dead. I don’t care. I’m going to say it.”
Commentary |
on In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova, translated from the Russian by Sasha Dugdale
“Pairing the dead with the living, In Memory of Memory traces a conspicuous matrilineal line, starting with the narrator’s great-grandmother Sarra Ginzburg, ‘a tribe of strong, individual women standing like milestones spanning the century … a staircase leading steadily toward me, consisting entirely of women.’”