The worst part wasn’t when they couldn’t get a table. It wasn’t when they put their name on the list and were told it would be an hour. It wasn’t when the hostess glanced at what they were wearing—t-shirts, swimsuits, flip flops—and emitted an audible sigh.
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Over the past decade, the migration of literary discussion to the internet has erased many of the distinctions between traditional criticism and what used to be thought of as “book blogging.” Many of the early bloggers now do a great deal of their writing for established print publications like Bookforum and The Times Literary Supplement, while most, if not all, of the traditional print venues for criticism have a significant online presence—that is, if they haven’t moved online entirely. The end result is a compromise; book bloggers have achieved a wider platform for their work, and the mainstream publications receive a much-needed injection of energy.
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Tara Roeder 1.) a group of insurance salesmen attend a professional conference. each one sees his doppelganger there, but each
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Welcome to another installment of If My Book, the Monkeybicycle feature in which authors shed light on their recently released books by comparing them to weird things. This week Kathy Flann writes about Get a Grip, her second story and collection and winner of the 2014 George Garrett Fiction Prize, just published by Texas Review Press.
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Perhaps the greatest magic trick performed in Not on Fire, Only Dying, the elegant and gritty debut from Susan Rukeyser, is its improbable blend of elegance and grit. Literary fiction disguised as a crime novel—or is it the other way around?—Rukeyser’s New Yorkers are not the irony-addicted denizens of coffee shops and gentrified walk-ups who have peopled so much contemporary literature set in the city.
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Gratification William Hamel Karl’s fingers turned into penises on his 40th birthday, and a few months later he finally
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Welcome to another installment of If My Book, the Monkeybicycle feature in which authors shed light on their recently released books by comparing them to weird things. This week Eric Shonkwiler writes about his second book and first story collection, Moon Up, Past Full, just published by Alternating Current Press.
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As a boy, Narcissus was a pudgy kid with constant sniffles and a habit of manipulating the various hollows of his body to simulate farting.
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A House Made of Stars, the first novel by Tawnysha Greene, depicts two young sisters who, like many—if not most—pairs of young sisters, live entirely at the mercy of their parents.
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