In the intro to season 6 of Novel Dialogue, Kate Marshall gets weird: “I was looking at writers who were considering themselves part of a new weird, and I wanted to ask what the old weird was, and so I started looking.”
Tag: Novel
“Gestures of Refusal”: A Conversation with Sarah Bernstein and Daisy Lafarge
“Why do we want our characters to be innocent, as if we are innocent ourselves?”
B-Sides: Neil M. Gunn’s “Highland River”
Freud taught that childhoods shape our adult selves with unresolved trauma. But this novel shows that childhood joy can shape adulthood, too.
On Our Nightstands: May 2023
A behind-the-scenes look at what Public Books editors and staff have been reading this month.
Crossing “The Tartar Steppe”: A New Buzzati
Did this 1940 novel use symbolism not for aesthetic purposes, but, instead, to conceal its critique of Italian fascism from the regime’s censors?
Growing Up in the World Made by Femicide
A dystopian buddy story shows misogynist violence emerging spontaneously—almost casually—from male camaraderie, from ennui, from dipshit youth.
Writing the Counter-Book: Joshua Cohen with Eugene Sheppard
“I was exorcising, if not the anxiety of influence, then the accusations of the anxiety of influence, and also issuing somewhat of a corrective.”
We Have This-ness Y’all! Ocean Vuong and Amy E. Elkins
“If you’re going to write in a worthwhile way about something, you have to really understand why you care.”
Franzen’s Anger
“Throughout Franzen’s life in public, he has figured himself as embattled, enemy-beset.”
On Our Nightstands: February 2023
A behind-the-scenes look at what Public Books editors and staff have been reading this month.
Leon Forrest: “Make a Way Out of No Way”
"He regarded with skepticism and clarity the temptations to make racial identity the foundation of our humanity."
“The Last Samurai,” Unread
“In a world where the imagined purpose of the novel is to entertain—not to teach or spark further inquiry—The Last Samurai dissents.”
“The Breath of Life”: Sheila Heti on Art, Loss, and Immortality
“Let it become the thing that leads you through your days for years on end—just allowing that problem to live in front of you and to guide you.”
Into the Woods with Yiyun Li
Fairy tales—like Li’s Book of Goose—are so scary because there is no cushion between you and the will of the world, no room for mistakes.
B-Sides: Fran Ross’s Oreo
“Oreo” is not the easiest read, but it is a book that is, in many ways, written against ease.
On Our Nightstands: September 2022
A behind-the-scenes look at what Public Books editors and staff have been reading this month.
“In Any Version of Reality”: Talking SF with Charles Yu
“It’s why science fiction matters so much to me: I’m trying to dislocate our sense of the normal.”
Light and Sound: Boubacar Boris Diop with Sarah Quesada
“I was more impressed by what I heard from my mother than by what I read in the library.”
“Our Lives Are at Stake”: Elaine Hsieh Chou on the Necessity of Asian American Writers
“Somehow, we are so present, and yet not even there. That surreal juxtaposition really pissed me off and fascinated me.”
B-Sides: Juan José Saer’s “The Investigation”
How to catch a killer who only exists in a parallel world?