Previous Issues Archives
Issue 11 Spring 2008
Features
Over and Under
Our opinionated contributors pick 10 overrated books and 10 underrated books.[more]
Where the Readers Are
Stephen King may be the loudest, but he isn’t the only one to proclaim the short story dead. Sam J. Miller argues people are just reading it in new ways.[more]
France’s Foremost Absurdist
How do you turn the death of the last orangutan into fiction? François Monti investigates Eric Chevillard and argues that his untranslated Destroying Nisard sheds light on America’s book review crisis. [more]
Sound of Myself
The Internet makes you feel more ignorant, argues Barrett Hathcock. It might actually make you more ignorant too.[more]
Denis Johnson’s Varieties of Religious Experience
John Lingan examines how William James’s view of “religious genius” unlocks the novels of Tree of Smoke–author Denis Johnson.[more]
Reviews
The Power of Flies by Lydie Salvayre
It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature by Diane Williams
Guatanamo by Dorothea Dieckmann
Dirt for Art’s Sake by Elisabeth Ladenson
Riding Toward Everywhere by William T. Vollmann
Best American Magazine Writing 2007
Wolves of the Crescent Moon by Yousef al-Mohaimeed
Matrimony by Joshua Henkin
Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee
Issue 10 Winter 2008
Features
The Fruits of Parasitism: Unraveling Enrique Vila-Matas’s Bartleby & Co. and Montano’s Malady
Novelist Enrique Vila-Matas might just think literature is a disease and himself a parasite of it. Scott Esposito discusses why this has let him write some of the most innovative fiction published today.[more]
The Literary Alchemy of César Aira
César Aira tosses absurd ideas into his novels by the handful and never bothers to revise or even edit. Marcelo Ballvé argues this method has pushed him to the forefront of the Argentine literary scene.[more]
My Own Private Mexico
It’s a shame Rodrigo Fresán’s Mantra hasn’t been translated into English, argues Javier Moreno. The book has mutated with each of its four translations, and a fifth would add new readings to the preceding four. Not to mention, English readers should know about Fresán’s continuously expanding inventory of all things we thought were Mexican but aren’t and his ethological study of sea monkeys in captivity (their natural habitat). [more]
Story, History, or Historia?
In Mexico, José Emilio Pacheco’s The Battles in the Desert is read by everyone from rock stars to high school students. In it, they find such typically Mexican concerns as memory, history, and national identity in a multicultural society. Elizabeth Wadell discusses how, for American readers, these matters don’t sound very foreign after all.[more]
Bond, In Mexico: An Homage to an Homage
The Mexican Revolution is a solemn touchstone of Mexican letters. Matt Bowman shows why Mexican author Jorge Ibargüengoitia has satirized and subverted it, and why he wishes more authors would follow in his steps.[more]
Life is Freedom: The Art of Vasily Grossman
The continued obscurity of the Soviet author Vasily Grossman is not easy to understand after one has spent any time with his writing, but a few conjectures come to mind. His masterpiece, Life and Fate, was published in the United States in 1985, and in 1985, the year that Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of [...][more]
Reviews
Autonauts of the Cosmoroute by Julio Cortazar
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Vibrator by Mari Akasaka
The Maias by Jose Maria Eça de Queirós
God Is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr.
The Meat and Spirit Plan by Selah Saterstrom
Partial List of People to Bleach by Gary Lutz
Sons and Other Flammable Objects by Porochista Khakpour
How to Read a Novel by John Sutherland
The Body Has a Mind of Its Own by Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee
Everything Is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger
Interviews
The Charles D’Ambrosio Interview
The Pascale Ferran Interview
Issue 9 Fall 2007
Features
The One That Got Away: Why James Wood is Wrong About Underworld (And Why Anyone Should Care)
Garth Risk Hallberg sorts out literary feuds, dissects James Wood’s essay against Don DeLillo’s 832-page opus Underworld, and argues that this book actually evolves the novel forward.[more]
Cogito, Ergo Doom: Exit Ghost and the Rest of Philip Roth’s Zuckerman Books
Barrett Hathcock reviews the new, final Zuckerman novel and considers Philip Roth from the standpoint of all nine.[more]
What are Prisons For?
Convicts write, and often very well. Scott Esposito discusses the state of America’s prisons and two new memoirs from Arizona’s prison writing program.[more]
A Pocket Full of Change: Trannies, Transformation, and the Gender Gap
Are two genders enough? Brien Michael wonders what two new books about men turning to women and women turning to men tell us about gender today.[more]
Reviews
Throw Like a Girl by Jean Thompson
Vain Art of the Fugue by Dumitru Tsepeneag
Remainder by Tom McCarthy
new poems by Tadeusz Rozewicz
Goldberg: Variations by Gabriel Josipovici
Right Livelihoods by Rick Moody
So Many Ways to Begin by Jon McGregor
Kokoro by Natsume Soseki
Before I Wake by Robert Wiersema
Issue 8 Summer 2007
Features
How to Feed the Monster
Two years ago, Brad Vice’s debut short story collection was pulled after plagarism charges. Now the collection has been published. Barrett Hathcock wants to know if the charges were legit, if the book is worth reading, and what it all means.[more]
Roberto Bolaño: A naïve introduction to the geometry of his fictions
In Bolaño’s novels, themes, ideas, events, and even characters constantly recur. Javier Moreno has figured out how to fit all the books together. Turns out to be a triangle. [more]
Educating Bolaño’s Orphans
Four years ago, Bolaño’s first English-language translation was published. Now, four books later and with Bolaño a legitimate phenomenon, Scott Esposito reassesses Bolaño’s first book and wonders why Bolaño has become so popular so fast.[more]
Reviews
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman
Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
Falling Man by Don DeLillo
Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcón
After Dark by Haruki Murakami
Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
The Virgin of Flames by Chris Abani
The Last Novel by David Markson
The Assistant by Robert Walser
Dancing in the Streets by Barbara Ehrenreich
Issue 7 Spring 2007
Features
No Funny Business: How Orhan Pamuk’s Postmodern Fictions Fall Short
All successful postmodern literature contains a comic element, argues Dan Green. Orhan Pamuk just isn’t funny.[more]
Thrice Told Tales: How Stories Become Reality in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow
Oral storytelling is an essential part of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s beliefs about art and politics. Scott Esposito explains how storytelling works on three levels in Thiong’o’s newest novel, Wizard of the Crow.[more]
Déjà Vu: On Rereading Catch-22
The language, logic, and structure of Catch-22 are like a Mobius strip, argues Elizabeth Wadell. So is rereading.[more]
Excerpt: Cautionary Tales
New work from Edie Meidav and Ken Stout, from their forthcoming book, Cautionary Tales.[more]
Reviews
Amulet by Roberto Bolaño
The Children’s Hospital by Chris Adrian
The Shape of Things to Come by Greil Marcus
Poor People by William T. Vollmann
The Mystery of the Sardine by Stefan Themerson
Of Song and Water by Joseph Coulson
Reading Like A Writer by Francine Prose
Golden Country by Jennifer Gilmore
All Aunt Hagar’s Children by Edward P. Jones
The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness by Stephen Levy
Issue 6 Winter 2007
Features
Basking in Hell: Returning to William H. Gass’s The Tunnel
William H. Gass’s 650-page novel The Tunnel is one of the most complex, challenging books published in English in the 1990s. Stephen Schenkenberg investigates two valuable offerings from the Dalkey Archive Press helping us understand this disagreeable and stunning novel.[more]
New Cliches: How Mulligan Stew Uses Old Lines to Slam Pretentious Authors
Mulligan Stew, considered by many to be Sorrentino’s greatest novel, is also probably the one in which his anger most powerfully dictates content. Yet, argues Scott Esposito, it’s not a rant, or a mere satire, but a literary masterpiece.[more]
World Cinema: The Independent Spirit of the Toronto International Film Festival
If the space for innovative cinema has shrunk over the course of two decades, unconquered territories still remain, perhaps even thrive, in the early 21st century. M.S. Smith discovers some of them at the Toronto International Film Festival.[more]
The Value of Religious Diversity
Is it correct to accept religion and science as squaring off across a red-blue scrimmage line? J.C. Hallman argues for a more inclusive view of each.[more]
Howdy Neighbor
John Updike is my neighbor. I have not talked to John Updike. He seems rather vaguely pissed off at me.[more]
What is Appropriate: Teaching Invitation to a Beheading, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Others to High Schoolers
Is it right to teach 12th-graders a book that involves blow jobs? Where should the line be drawn, and who should draw it? Teachers? Administrators? Matthew Cheney delves into his time as a teacher to find an answer as to what is appropriate.[more]
Reviews
Whose Freedom? by George Lakoff
Remember Me by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen
Red the Fiend by Gilbert Sorrentino
Triangle by Katharine Weber
Suspension by Robert Westfield
Issue 5 Fall 2006
Features
Haruki Murakami’s Meaningful Metaphors
Haruki Murakami’s plots feel like modern-day fairy tales. Scott Esposito considers how Murakami’s plots come to resemble and evoke the inner minds of his characters.[more]
Haruki Murakami’s Supernatural War
Ever since World War II ended, American novelists have used China, Italy, the Philippines, Dunkirk, Dresden, and many other battlegrounds to represent everything from the effect of racism on American society to the strength of the American family. Katie Wadell argues that Haruki Murakami introduces us to an altogether different warfront in novels such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and A Wild Sheep Chase.[more]
A Short Guide to Murakami’s Short Fiction
One of our time’s most fecund writers, Murakami has composed a dizzying array of short fiction. Here, Matthew Tiffany runs down some of the best, making an excellent starting point for those looking for an entry into Murakami’s short works.[more]
How Can We Read in an Age of Images?
How to reconcile the Internet’s love of the image with literature’s blocks and blocks of words? Finn Harvor has a few answers.[more]
Reviews
A Writer at War by Vasily Grossman
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
The Obstacles by Eloy Urroz
The Secret River by Kate Grenville
Visigoth by Gary Amdahl
The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo by Peter Orner
Tomorrow They Will Kiss by Eduardo Santiago
Issue 4 Summer 2006
Features
Some of the Best Books Since 1990
A survey of bloggers, publishers, writers, and editors to start a discussion over what books have shaped literature since 1990.[more]
Reviews
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
Total Chaos by Jean-Claude Izzo
Hungry Planet by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio
The Din in the Head by Cynthia Ozick
In Night’s City by Dorothy Nelson
Music from Big Pink by John Niven
The Lost Men by Kelly Tyler-Lewis
Realm of the Dead by Uchida Hyakken
Issue 3 Spring 2006
Features
Breaking the Code: Against Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate
Steven Pinker implies that art that isn’t rooted in evolution is perforce bad and irresponsible art. Dan Green has other ideas.[more]
Reconsidering Thomas Bernhard’s Correction
Bernhard’s predominant concern is the subordination of reality to language. David Sepanik discusses how in Correction the process of language overwhelms lived existence.[more]
Reviews
The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery
Bouvard and Pecuchet by Gustave Flaubert
Time Was Soft There by Jeremy Mercer
Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap
A Writer at War by Vasily Grossman
Insect Dreams by Marc Estrin
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders
Issue 2 Winter 2006
Features
Creative Oppositions: The Poetry of Frank Bidart
Hate and love, the horrifying recognition that opposites contain each other, these are the things Bidart illuminates in flaming letters. Elizabeth Wadell considers Bidart’s Star Dust, delving into this feverish and impassioned collection.[more]
Reading Alberto Moravia’s Boredom
Scott Esposito investigates Moravia’s 1960 masterpiece, Boredom. The protagonist, Dino, can only know the outside world by owning it, yet everything Dino tries to possess slips from his grip.[more]
Reviews
Oh Pure and Radiant Heart by Lydia Millet
Gemma Bovery by Posy Simmonds
Big Lonesome: Stories by Jim Ruland
Between Two Worlds by Zainab Salbi
Issue 1 Fall 2005
Features
The Art Behind Putting Together an Issue of a Literary Journal
Dan Wickett talks to the editors of two literary journals to find out just how they do it.[more]
Reviews
Devil Talk by Daniel Olivas
The Breaking Point by Stephen Koch
Hardboiled & Hard Luck by Banana Yoshimoto
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
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