The best poets tend to trouble conventions, including those they find necessary.
Tag: Narrative
Ditching the “New Yorker” Voice
“What does it mean to self-narrate? What does self-insight look like?”
McCarthy’s Perpetual Motion Scam
Tom McCarthy hasn’t evaded the literary brand: if you continually say nothing, “saying nothing” becomes what you, the novelist, say.
“No Words”: Refugee Camps and Empathy’s Limits
Empathy will not close the refugee camps, nor will it aid refugees. So what will?
B-Sides: Lucy R. Lippard’s “I See/You Mean”
“Few libraries list it among their holdings, and sometimes I have wondered if the book in my possession actually exists.”
America Learns What Russia Knew
How to tell a story always matters enormously. This already urgent task takes on added dimensions and gravity when the story itself is about information ...
A Thousand and One Translations
In an era of increasing protectionism and nationalism, it may seem surprising (though encouraging!) that translated literature is actually on the rise in the ...
Doctor Stories and Patient Stories
Richard Powers’s The Echo Maker tells the story of a Nebraskan meat-packer who crashes his truck into the ditch of a river. He awakens from a coma with Capgras ...
Live Theory: An Interview with Tom McCarthy
“It might just be that the final measure of a writer is not so much what they achieve themselves as what they render possible for others.” This is the final sentence of ...