Starting in the late 1970s, Revlon (in)famously peddled its fragrance Enjoli to working women by asserting a woman wearing this scent could not only ...
Tag: Gothic
Trouble in Lovecraft Country
Matt Ruff’s novel Lovecraft Country drops into the world of science-fiction and horror publishing at an interesting time. The fandom around this culture is arcane and probably irremediably nerdy to ...
The Essential Gratuitousness of César Aira
It is not in the least original to begin talking about César Aira’s work by recounting the technique that produces it. But it can’t be helped: Aira has made a discussion of his practice obligatory ...
Return to the Fold
At first glance, Rectify may seem like another variation on that favorite TV conceit of recent years: a damaged, asocial male struggles to reconcile with the modern world (see Breaking Bad, Mad Men ...
Sweet Rage
Until the publication of the long-awaited See Now Then, Jamaica Kincaid’s stories and novels had met with almost unqualified praise. When it appeared last year her latest book was almost unanimously ...
Don’t Go Back to Princeton
In Joyce Carol Oates’s The Accursed, life in Princeton, NJ, appears as an endless round of frigid isolation, punctuated by the occasional diabolically inventive rape. Circa 1905, a curse has fallen ...