“If you’re going to write in a worthwhile way about something, you have to really understand why you care.”
Tag: Novel
“Having to Explain Who You Are”: Caryl Phillips on Baldwin, Fiction, & Sports
“The first thing he said is, ‘Don't call me Mr. Baldwin. My name is Jimmy.’ I thought, this is ridiculous, at the very least he's James.”
This Review Should Not Exist
Latin American authors must defer to “Latin America”—as imagined by centers of literary power—to be translated, to sell, to make money.
“Everything Possible with Everything Given”
There are so many utopias. Could one be a small collective of nuns, performing their chores, far from the disasters of the 12th century?
B-Sides: Agnes Smedley’s “Daughter of Earth”
Very much against the grain of most standard leftist work, “Daughter of Earth” remains unsettled and unsettling throughout.
Did Don Quixote Long for Muslim Spain?
Between the lines, Cervantes critiqued the Catholic church, and lamented over the systematic destruction of Islamic culture in Spain.
Public Thinker: Merve Emre Throws a Party for Different Readers
“One way to think about the act of annotating is that you are that meddlesome party gossip, telling the reader how to draw connections between the different parts of the text.”
B-Sides: Janet Frame’s “Living in the Maniototo”
Few novels are so crammed with invention. Yet the interlocking richness of her ideas does not derail your reading.
Seek, Memory …
If memory is an unreliable narrator, how can it be the medium through which we arrive at the truth about ourselves?
The Netanya-who?s: Gossip and Other Kinds of History
Benzion Netanyahu—father of the former prime minister—is not the protagonist; rather, it is his scholarship and the practice of history itself.
A Messy Utopia Is All We Might Get
Climate change didn’t just wreck the planet; it closed off and reshaped the future. Even utopia—if we reach it—will be a mess.
The Indifference Engine
Nobody knows what will be useful in the future. And this is why we so often find humanistic activities in the seeds and roots of STEM.
The Asian American Novel in Our Time of Hate
What does it mean to write—and read—an American novel in the wake of anti-Asian racism and hate crimes, events connected to a history of Asian exclusion?
Literary and Manual Labors: Pittsfield, Massachusetts
“I have been building some shanties of houses …,” wrote Melville to Hawthorne, “and likewise some shanties of chapters and essays.”
Reading Resources: The Novel
A resource for reading about, teaching, and discussing the novel as an artistic and cultural form.
Episode 5: Novels & Medicine
How can reading novels affect the way doctors and patients communicate?
Episode 4: Novels & Catastrophe
How do novels help us see the present in a broader historical perspective?
Episode 3: Novels & Intimacy
How can novels expand our understanding of sex and intimacy in the digital age?
Episode 2: Novels & Political Consciousness
How does reading novels affect our understanding of the power dynamics that shape our lives?
Episode 1: Novels & Ideas
How do novels provoke readers to wrestle with complex, even dangerous ideas?