Essays
March 16, 2010
Reading War and Peace: The Effects of Great Art on an Ordinary Life 3
by Kevin Hartnett
One somewhat disquieting effect of reading War and Peace is that the more your own thoughts show up in its pages, the less original your life begins to feel.
March 15, 2010
Country of Quakes 0
by Luke Epplin
In Chile, one learns the word for earthquake before the word for thunder, a consequence of living in a country where thunder rumbles infrequently but the earth shakes every few months.
March 11, 2010
On Epigraphs 9
by Andrew Tutt
Should epigraphs be thought of as part of the text, a sort of pre-modern, post-modern device, like tossing a newspaper clipping into the body narrative? Or are they actually a direct invitation by the author, perhaps saying, “Look here, for from this inspiration came this tale?”
March 10, 2010
Through the Looking Glass: Notes on Disappearance 7
by Emily St. John Mandel
People don’t disappear nearly as often in real life as they do in fiction. We’re fascinated, as a culture, by the idea of vanishing.
March 9, 2010
What About Genre, What About Horror? 44
by Peter Straub
Just for beginners, let’s admit that literary fiction is a genre, too, shall we? Expectations guide its readers, that of respect for consensus reality and the poignancy of seemingly ordinary lives, of sensitive character-drawing and vivid scene-painting, of the reversals and conflicts characteristic of the several sub-genres of literary fiction.
March 4, 2010
Dispatch from the Borders-Land 12
by Craig Fehrman
Late on a late December Friday, I decided to try something different: I headed to a mall-bound Borders and asked 37 customers about their relationship to books.
