Commentary |
on Tremor, a novel by Teju Cole
“He first aligns our sightline with Tunde’s, then pulls our frame back beyond his. It’s the first hint that Cole, once on the front line of the autofiction boom, is up to something new.”
Commentary |
on OCTOBERS, poems by Sahar Muradi
“A diversity of forms, often invented, encapsulate both the experiences of alienation and underlying possibilities for deepening understanding and connection.”
Commentary |
on The Long Form, a novel by Kate Briggs
“… in choosing the hybrid form of the “part-novel” or “novel essay” for The Long Form, Briggs invokes, via quotation, Mikhail Bakhtin’s “conviction that ‘There is never any problem, ever, which can be confined within a single framework.’”
Commentary |
on Lou Reed: King of New York by Will Hermes
“Hermes will often introduce a musical, creative, or romantic partner through the lens of what their common ground was — not a small thing for an artist with whom common ground was hard to find.”
Commentary |
on The Delivery, a novel by Margarita García Robayo, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell
“Robayo’s most confident work to date, culling the concepts of the author’s previous fiction to present a surreal tale grounded in a recognizable environment.”
Commentary |
on The MANIAC, a novel by Benjamin Labatut
“AI makes use of a forward-chaining, which describes how one links data together to advance toward a goal, and in some sense that’s how Labatut structures his novel.”
Commentary |
on Giornata, poems by Irina Mashinski, translated from the Russian by Maria Bloshteyn & Boris Dralyuk
“Grieving in language — this is what poet does day by day, as giornata describes the amount of paint an artist can apply to the canvas in a single day of work.”
Commentary |
on The Book Eaters, poetry by Carolina Hotchandani
“As Hotchandani’s perspective shifts from that of a daughter to one of a mother, her project considers metaphor as a tactic to explore, define –– and perhaps recover –– a life.”
Commentary |
on Late Romance: Anthony Hecht, A Poet’s Life by David Yezzi
“Hecht had an emotionally rough time as a poet, not due to lack of attention (fiercely ambitious, he was well-situated from the get-go) but because of his deeply serious struggle to work out his poetic ‘take’ on the postwar world.”
Commentary |
on How To Be: Life Lessons from the Early Greeks by Adam Nicolson
“In Empedocles’ fragments Nicolson finds a summation of all he has been interested in — the reconciliation of the here and now with the beyond. The universe is shaped by the battle between the unifying power of Love and the separating impact of Strife, but Love is the primary driver of the cosmic cycle.”
Commentary |
on The Burning World, poems by Sherod Santos
“In the context of his eschatological vision of the world’s critical mass of political and environmental crises, his stark imagery sounds dire alarms with apocalyptic evidence.”
Commentary |
on Exhibitions: Essays on art and Atrocity by Jehanne Dubrow
“She writes: ‘Here is one of the problems with the beautiful. It exists, even adjacent to horror.” And not just adjacent to horror, but within it.'”
Commentary |
on My Work, a novel by Olga Ravn, translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi & Jennifer Russell
“… a triumph that teaches us to see mothers — bodies, viserca, child, lover, work and all. The novel places the overdetermined, overperformed self and holds it in place for us to watch the woman contingently lay claim to herself.”
Commentary |
Book Notes: on Time’s Mouth, a novel by Edan Lepucki & A Practical Guide to Levitation, stories by José Eduardo Agualusa, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
“… a magical realist California morality tale about motherhood, the search for safety, and generational strife with a light touch that avoids trauma-speak but doesn’t mitigate the negative effects of selfishness.”
Commentary |
on The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time by Yascha Mounk
“In his view, ‘wokeness’ has mutated, virus-like, from college campuses into mainstream media, infecting millions of professors and students, pundits and politicians, and birthing a cottage industry of DEI consultants.”