For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Roland Barthes, in his lecture course The Preparation of the Novel, was especially interested in the practical, lived dimensions of what it might be like to write something of considerable length. In Kate Briggs’ latest book, The Long Form—taking its title, and an epigraph, from this very same lecture course, which she translated into … Read more
[ad_1] It’s just business as usual at the Bureau of Metahuman, Mutant, and Occult Affairs until an employee for the government agency begins to wonder if work is following her home. . . Thursday, 8:47 a.m. Leelee’s second cup of coffee hasn’t even worked its pitiful magic yet, she hasn’t finished deleting all her work … Read more
[ad_1] Chicago is home to an always generative arts and culture scene and is an exceptionally rich poetry town, inspiring and supporting a noteworthy group of America’s finest poets. Dr. Taylor Byas extends that lineage with her debut collection, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, which showcases an assured poet exploring weighty concepts of … Read more
[ad_1] As a poet and nonfiction writer, Sarah Manguso is known for her gifts of compression. In 2017’s 300 Arguments—a work consisting of short, aphoristic sections of prose—she writes, “I don’t write long forms because I’m not interested in artificial deceleration. As soon as I see the glimmer of a consequence, I pull the trigger.” … Read more
[ad_1] For all the ink shed—in reviews, interviews, and criticism—about the trials and tribulations of navigating the literary world on the level of the individual novel, comparatively little space is provided to career-wide discussions. While this is understandable given the enormous challenge that writing and publishing just one book presents to the writer (not to … Read more
[ad_1] Occasionally a novel comes along that stretches the formal limits of language on the page. A novel that bends the rules, that glides past the barriers that we had assumed were unassailable, firmly entrenched around our preconceived notions of fiction and form. It’s somehow odd that we are surprised each time this occurs, as … Read more