Don’t Forget about The Art of Fiction
Image via The Paris Review http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews Just a bit of a PSA today. Unless you have an ontological opposition to reading interviews, you should absolutely check out the…
The Tenth of December, the Limits of Irony (and the Best Kind of Irony)
image via Goodreads Saunders is very much a known entity, but that’s certainly no strike against the man. He’s got a style that (among many other things) seems to both…
Hertfielder and Papazien: Why it’s OK to thoroughly enjoy a bad book every now and then
Both of these books are somewhat badly written, at least by the standards I judge writing by. The prose is either unremarkable or flawed, given to cliche and obvious tropes.…
Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano and Grading Debut Novels on a Curve
Debut novels are interesting. I’m a big Vonnegut fan. I’m planning to read all of his novels and then get a tattoo of the asshole he drew in Breakfast of…
Flashman at the Charge, The Flashman Papers, and my spotted history with historical fiction
I had never heard of George MacDonald Fraser’s “Flashman” books before picking a few up on a recommendation. I’ve got an innate suspicion of historical fiction borne out of an…
P.G. Wodehouse and the Role of Humor (vs. Comedy)
The writings of P.G. Wodehouse might suggest themselves as antithetical to everything I cherish in literature, but that suggestion would be erroneous. In spite of my rabid disliking of golf,…
“Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” and -just read it already it’s a great goddamn novel, ok?
One of my favorite novels of the year, this book does very many things extremely well. It’s one of the best examples of free indirect narrations I’ve ever come across,…
Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-Haunted World”: In Defense of the Pocket Protector and Slide Rule
Carl Sagan’s writing is hopelessly nerdy. It’s also pretty time-stamped -even without the rather frequent references to current events, it’s not hard to tell what part of the twentieth century…
Oliver Sacks’ “On the Move” -a rich existence relived
I finished the late Oliver Sacks’ most recent (and most general) memoir days before his death. As an avid listener of Radiolab (where he was a frequent contributor) I was…
Flash Fiction Forward: it ain’t the length itself that bugs me, but there are some disturbing correlations…
Flash Fiction Forward: 80 Very Short Stories by James Thomas (edt) I approached this critically acclaimed collection of flash fiction with as much honest impartiality as a true-born cynic such…