Commentary |
on Loudermilk or The Real Poet or The Origin of the World, a novel by Lucy Ives
“Loudermilk could be regarded as a campus novel, a portrait of the artist, a scam story, a retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac, or a farce.”
Commentary |
on Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells by Pico Iyer
“Moments of pause, solemnity and care arise modestly throughout the prose, such that a reader begins to register these rhythms and tones as if they emanate from within oneself.”
Commentary |
on Tsunami vs. the Fukushima 50 by Lee Ann Roripaugh & Savage Conversations by LeAnne Howe
“The discursive personae in these visionary narratives allow the poets to grapple with the enormity of human tragedy and folly.”
Commentary |
on The Return of The Langston Hughes Review
“A writer as influential as Hughes demands attention, not only to understand aesthetic movements and their purposes, but also to contextualize individual artists, their histories and complexities.”
Commentary |
on Tears of the Trufflepig, a novel by Fernando Flores
“The novel is full of surprising circumstances, many of which are conveyed in embedded or nested stories … a trenchant but often humorous critique of colonialism, immigration policy, and the 1%, with eerie parallels to our existing political discourse …”
Commentary |
on All the Fierce Tethers, essays by Lia Purpura
“Few writers work as hard as Lia Purpura to interrogate the language of our world, to try to shift our perceptions away from the metaphors we habitually apply to what we see.”
Commentary |
on Tap Out, poems by Edgar Kunz
“Kunz wants to look squarely at the ‘quiet hands’ not just of his father but of his entire world — and, if he can bear it, ‘not turn away.'”
Commentary |
on Mac’s Problem, a novel by Enrique Vila-Matas, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa and Sophie Hughes
“Vila-Matas’ books show how the absorption of literature sustains the desire to write while threatening to bury a would-be writer in a tomb of endless possibilities.”
Commentary |
on Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World, by Jason Farman
“Waiting implies submission to another’s will. Forced to remain in place, we wait for service, for information, for our freedom.”
Commentary |
on Standpoints: 10 Old Ideas in a New World by Svend Brinkmann
“In the end, Standpoints is a book about freedom – but it is more invested in freedom to rather than freedom from.”
Commentary |
on Since When: A Memoir in Pieces by Bill Berkson
“An innovative poet and art critic in his own right, he had the good fortune to find himself in dialogue with some of the most inspiring figures of his time, at the heart of a fascinating cultural mix …”
Commentary |
on Never A Lovely So Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren by Colin Asher
“That somebody so embittered about American society, and so shaky on his feet, would rise to mass sales and critical acclaim is one of the most remarkable success stories in American literature.”
Commentary |
on Anarchy’s Brief Summer: The Life and Death of Buenaventura Durruti by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, translated by Mike Mitchell
“Source documents don’t synthesize, historians are fabulists, and their histories are more related to anarchy than they know. Or so Enzensberger tempts us to speculate.”
Commentary |
on Lost and Wanted, a novel by Nell Freudenberger
“Maybe in Nell Freudenberger’s universe it is eternally the pre-lapsarian summer of 2001, except with better computers …”
Commentary |
on Instructions for a Funeral, stories by David Means
“A Means story is a literary equivalent of zooming in to view a picture on your phone: a concentrated gesture that allows the eye to examine myriad details otherwise overlooked.”