For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] What is art, and maybe more importantly, what isn’t art? It’s a question that only seems to gain relevance, as more and more narratives come to us in the form of franchises, brand tie-ins, and other forms of marketing disguised as story. Thankfully, Alexander Maksik’s latest novel, The Long Corner, is none of those … Read more
[ad_1] Success is difficult to define. In the modern American landscape, it’s a term that’s become more or less synonymous with wealth rather than any sort of achievement. In the podcast The Relentless Picnic, the hosts remarked on the seeming absurdity that one could be considered a born-success. Fortunately, that’s not a problem for Nineteen, … Read more
[ad_1] It’s perhaps an unfortunate aspect of art that the value we perceive in it is at least partially derived from public opinion. Who was the work’s creator, and from what circumstances was it made? In Portrait of an Unknown Lady, the second novel from Maria Gainza that has been translated into English by Thomas … Read more
[ad_1] From the beginning of recorded history, there’s one thing we’re all certain about: one day, this is all going to end. “I am writing this book because we’re all going to die,” says Kerouac, in Visions of Cody, a eulogy in book form to his friend Neal Cassady. But in a sense, all books … Read more
[ad_1] In many ways, we are our experiences. We wake up, experience something, react to it, consider it, form thoughts on it, go to sleep, and wake up again. This continuity of thought—memory connecting point to point to point—is one of the ways we as people come to define ourselves, according to John Locke. Novels, … Read more
[ad_1] Sitting in his family’s ancestral cemetery, Saša Stanišić ponders a snake in a sorb-apple tree. The town grows emptier each year, and soon it will be left only to the horned vipers to keep watch over the sheep. He thinks of the dragons said to make their homes in the peaks of the hills … Read more
[ad_1] There are some stories that seem as if the only goal is to go as big as possible. Globe trotting adventures, dastardly villains, and always a bigger and brighter battle just over the horizon. Through stories like these, it can be easy to overlook the weirdness that happens even in your own community. In … Read more
[ad_1] Jonas Eika—author of After the Sun, translated into English by Sherilyn Nicolette Helberg—has managed to do the impossible; or, at least, the very difficult. He’s written a book that both feels bleeding-edge now, and seems like it will still feel bleeding-edge in a decade. Certainly, the complexities of our modern world are no stranger … Read more
[ad_1] Katie Kitamura’s fourth novel, Intimacies, is deeply concerned with place. At lunch with her boss, our unnamed protagonist is asked, “Where is your family,” meaning, where do you belong? It’s a question that comes up more than once, and one the protagonist can’t answer. She’s stuck between cultures, between languages, between moral positions; even … Read more
[ad_1] After bursting onto the literary scene with last year’s Real Life, Brandon Taylor is back with another book—this time a collection of stories called Filthy Animals. Filthy Animals sees Taylor revisit many of the same themes that he first tackled in Real Life, with many characters being scientists or mathematicians, both since-reformed and unrepentant, … Read more