For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Rejection letter erasure poems recently took over literary Twitter/X. Writers scribble over rejection letters they’ve received, omitting words and phrases until another message emerges. That message is often brutally funny, as if a barefaced NO lay submerged beneath the carefully crafted letter all along. But these erasure poems do more than give writers a … Read more
[ad_1] In 1870, parole emerged as a progressive-era reform to a growing problem. Disillusioned with the spectacle of punishment, parole would return lawbreakers to full citizenship once they could prove they had changed. Their logic was simple. How could a judge at trial know a person’s capacity for change? If prisons were meant to rehabilitate … Read more
[ad_1] When I think “satire” as a genre of writing, I think The Onion, or McSweeny’s, maybe A Modest Proposal—writing that is upfront and obvious about its satire. But there’s another level of skill when a writer is able to weave in satire without it being the first thought you have when reading it. Jeremy … Read more
[ad_1] Is liberalism dead? Has that dewy-eyed, woke, overly optimistic beast of limited eyesight, enlarged heart, and dangerously underdeveloped brain, this Jabberwocky of the geopolitical wood finally been slain? More to the point, can we at last acknowledge that there are no such things as universal values, no inherently reliable truth to language, and that … Read more
[ad_1] The Translator’s Voice is a new monthly column from Ian J. Battaglia here at the Chicago Review of Books, dedicated to global literature and the translators who work tirelessly and too often thanklessly to bring these books to the English-reading audience. Subscribe to his newsletter to get notified of new editions as well as other notes on … Read more
[ad_1] Bestselling Canadian author Karma Brown never shies away from tackling hard topics. Her first novel, Come Away with Me, was a fascinating portrait of a woman dealing with unspeakable loss; subsequent novels have addressed infertility, gestational surrogacy, all-consuming guilt, the dark side of 1950s ideals, and other ethical and moral quandaries. Her gift is … Read more
[ad_1] There’s no way to ease into this. I met James Kennedy in person while he was dressed as a tornado. If your brain can stretch to imagine what that looked like and how it might be done, Kennedy’s new book, Bride of the Tornado, is for you. With that particular Midwest experience of high … Read more
[ad_1] Some of our best literary characters, such as Adrian Veidt in Alan Moore’s Watchmen or Jay Gatsby, fall from grace due to their idealism being overtaken by bitterness and calculating utilitarianism. Their perspective is lost and therefore so is the world they are striving to achieve. What made them so compelling at first was … Read more
[ad_1] The thing about longing is that it could take any form, really. Though vastly different on the surface, everything from going on walks or reading poems, to forged marriages for the sake of securing permanent legal residence, skipping meals, or crossing borders can be powered by an ineffable call towards something, someone, that emanates … Read more
[ad_1] “One thing all truths have in common,” observes Angela, the protagonist of award-winning author Jennifer duBois’s fourth novel, The Last Language, is that “they are only visible from certain distances.” Angela is a twenty-seven-year-old PhD candidate in linguistics at Harvard. She is also the recently widowed mother of four-year-old Josephine. After a harrowing miscarriage, … Read more