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on Hue 1968 by Mark Bowden and Mourning Headband for Hue by Nhã Ca, translated by Olga Dror
In his early career as a staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Mark Bowden wrote a breakout feature on Joey Coyle, an unemployed longshoreman who found a bag stuffed with $1.2 million on a Philadelphia street. John Cusack played Coyle in the 1993 film adaptation Money for Nothing. Next, Bowden’s first book appeared, narrating the…
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on Experimental Animals: A Reality Fiction by Thalia Field
“As too often happens at night in my room, dread freezes my body, then the bed, apartment, the streets as I picture them, the wider city, the countryside, the heavens – everything is stranded and still – until a raspy whine pulls me to a rabbit in a box in the kitchen. She is cut…
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on Blameless, a novel by Claudio Magris
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“What Will You Read This Summer?” 28 Friends List Some Titles
I asked 27 friends (and a daughter) to name the titles of books they plan to read this summer. Scroll down to find lists by Elliot Ackerman, Jack Black, Eduardo Corral, Roz Chast, Rebecca Dinerstein, Rikki Ducornet, Joseph Gonnella, Tyehimba Jess, Nick Kroll, Tess Lewis, Fiona Maazel, Bill Marx, Gail Mazur, Jay Monahan, Laura O’Neill,…
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on Behind The Moon, a novel by Madison Smartt Bell
I got hooked on Jungian psychology and mythopoesis as an undergraduate in the late 1960s, a preference that made me an unresponsive graduate student of structuralism. A concept such as “the eternal return” is invalidated when signs and mythic stories aren’t granted enduring archetypal and transpersonal significance. Also, I wasn’t receptive to the socialist-inflected lectures…
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on Baseball Books: Leo Durocher, Pitching as Deception, and Casey Stengel
Leo Durocher: Baseball’s Prodigal Son by Paul Dickson (Bloomsbury) Off Speed: Baseball, Pitching, and the Art of Deception by Terry McDermott (Pantheon) Casey Stengel: Baseball’s Greatest Character by Marty Appel (Doubleday) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * One night…
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on Boredom, edited by Tom McDonough
In “Dream Song 14,” John Berryman not only exposed his boredom but patched in his world’s disapproval of such languishing: "Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we ourselves flash and yearn, and moreover my mother told me as a boy (repeatingly) ‘Ever to…
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on White Tears, a novel by Hari Kunzru
The conclusion of Hari Kunzru’s White Tears leaves the reader shaken by the long habits of racism in America and the misappropriation of culture. But the beginning is all about sound. “Every sound wave has a physiological effect, every vibration,” says Seth, the narrator. “I once heard a field recording of a woman singing, sitting…
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Nine Poets Recommend New & Recent Titles
Welcome back to “Poets Recommend,” the Seawall’s semi-annual poetry feature. This season, nine poets write briefly on some of their favorite recently published titles. This multi-poet/title feature is posted here in April and November. Scroll down to read. The commentary includes: Lisa Russ Spaar on Watchful by Molly Bendall (Omnidawn Publishing) Ari Banias on The…
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on City Gate, Open Up, a memoir by Bei Dao, translated by by Jeffrey Yang
Zhao Zhenkai was 17 years old when Mao’s Cultural Revolution occurred in 1966. At his high school, he was among those who forced his teachers to wear incriminating placards around their necks, and who ridiculed, kicked and punched them through a gauntlet in the schoolyard. He had become one of the Red Guards. In the…
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on Stigmata of Bliss, three novellas by Klaus Merz
The most generous writers give the reader something to do, respecting their capabilities. The least generous ones explain too much, reflecting credit on themselves. The Swiss writer Klaus Merz has engaged his readers in such a way that he is beloved among Germanophones who regard his 1997 novella Jacob Asleep as a contemporary classic. At…
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on Slight Exaggeration, an essay by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanaugh
One day in the late 1990’s while teaching in Houston, Adam Zagajewski received a call from his friend Czeslaw Milosz in Berkeley. Milosz was then in his mid-80’s. Zagajewski remembers, “I heard sorrow, deep melancholy in his voice … Finally he asked me, Adam, please tell me honestly, have I ever in my life written…
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on 2084: The End of the World, a novel by Boualem Sansal, translated by Alison Anderson
In the wake of the Great Holy War of 2084, hundreds of millions of martyrs lay dead and vast regions are devastated, probably caused by atomic weapons. Now there is only Abistan whose residents worship the omniscient deity Yölah and his earthly messenger Abi who rules absolutely through his many ministries in the capital city…