By Alice Lowe
I have no frame of reference for Ernaux’s memories of the restrictions and reconstruction of postwar Europe, of the domination of the Catholic Church and attending all-girl convent schools. I’m not yet a part of her collective “we.” But then she describes a photo of herself in 1955, wearing a short-sleeved sweater, polka-dot skirt, and ballerina flats, and I see myself. Continue reading
by Sonya Chung
“Coops lag behind traditional publishers in terms of marketing clout and reach, but their size makes them more flexible and responsive in rapidly changing circumstances . . . they can take a chance on good books without worrying about whether they have mass-market appeal.” Continue reading
by Robin Black
At the age of 39, just about two decades after having the dream that amplified my misguided conviction that genius should be my goal, I was finally able to write. Continue reading
by Alice Lowe
In his 1946 New Yorker review of Do I Wake or Sleep, Edmund Wilson, one of the most prominent critics of his day, called Isabel Bolton’s voice “exquisitely perfect in accent.” Continue reading
by Kaulie Lewis
It’s a philosophical point greatly at odds with Kundera’s earlier work, and that may be the novella’s most interesting quality. Of course, we recommend you read it for yourself and decide. Continue reading
by Nicki Leone
She found the lectures stifling, but the intellectual demands bracing . . . She called it “seven years’ ecstatic experience interspersed with brief periods of gloom . . . a sort of lengthy spiritual-intellectual chess game.” Continue reading
“I read somewhere that most people’s favorite teacher is a high school English teacher. That doesn’t mean that English teachers are better than other teachers. It means that rather than talk about amoebas or equations, we talk about feelings – Holden Caulfield’s, Hamlet’s, Hedda Gabler’s – and teenagers are full of feelings, so we’re right up their alley. Teaching literature is like shooting fish in a barrel and damned near solipsistic; every great book is, after all, about me.” Continue reading
