Articles by Emily Colette Wilkinson
November 2, 2009
Difficult Books: Richardson, Sterne, Melville 14
Clarissa‘s difficulty lies almost exclusively in its length. Tristram Shandy is a post-modern classic before there was any modernism to be post- about. In Moby Dick, a mix of novelistic narration and plot, reverie and essay, quasi-scientific treatise, monologues and dialogues, technical descriptions, a miscellany of quotations.
October 31, 2009
Critterati 0
Happy Halloween! At the New Yorker, the winners of the dress your pet as a literary character contest. Don’t miss the honorable mentions (I’m partial to the feline Moby Dick).
October 29, 2009
Difficult Books: Burton, Milton, Swift 3
The Anatomy of Melancholy is “a rhapsody of rags.” Paradise Lost can be Yoda-ish, only more complex. With A Tale of a Tub, the reader is sucked down by the ferocious energy of the satire.
October 29, 2009
Introducing Difficult Books, A Descriptive List 38
This post inaugurates a new Millions series devoted to identifying and describing these most difficult books: ones we’ve read/wrangled with ourselves, ones we’ve known students to struggle with time and again, ones that, more simply, “everyone knows” are hard to read.
October 22, 2009
Flying Mice 0
Seemingly from the realm of science fiction comes a recent announcement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Scientists there have succeeded in levitating mice.
October 22, 2009
Get Outta Town, Pat Buchanan 0
“White Americans do not realize how black they are,” writes Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish. If, upon reading Sullivan, you find yourself questioning your racial identity, try the blog Stuff White People Like–sure, most of it is really stuff that dinks and yuppies like (class trumps race, as Walter Ben Michaels explains at the [...]
