Ah, The Children: Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad

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Fans of Egan’s previous novels will be intrigued and excited, I think, to delve into her work in this new (for her) collage, time-shifty, polyphonic form.
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It’s Not You, It’s Me: Breaking Up With Books

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Recently it struck me that the list of books I’ve started and not finished has grown quite formidable. I ask myself what this “means,” if it reflects some kind of moral devolution.
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I Heart Chekhov; Better Than Booze or Smokes

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Praising Chekhov, I realize, is a little like rooting for the Yankees (or Duke; or Roger Federer)
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Navigating the Turbulence of “Up in the Air”

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If you ascribe to the notion that, more than anything, great art disturbs, Reitman has indeed crafted something lasting.
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The Millions Interview: David Shields (Part Two)

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Crucial for me in writing this book was my vexed sense of the way in which great nonfiction is badly boxed in by straightahead memoir, on the one hand, and straightahead fiction, on the other.
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The Millions Interview: David Shields (Part One)

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I’m trying to renew the novel form, not end it. A relationship is like a shark; if it doesn’t keep moving, it dies. What we have here is a dead shark. Can we not shock it awake?
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Brodsky’s Cat: Andrey Khrzhanovsky’s A Room and a Half

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A Room and a Half not only allows for the fictional Brodsky’s particular nostalgia, but seems to suggest it as the indispensable poetic impulse.
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Sex, Seriously: James Salter Trumps the Great Male Novelists

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It’s been said that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” The same might be said for sex, and even more aptly when it comes to writing about writing about sex.
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