Nothing Down
… This is in many ways a coming-out novel, written in an unadorned style with a deliberately limited vocabulary forming short, mostly declarative sentences.
MoreBrowsing: March-April 2009
March-April 2009
Blog Posts
No Ordinary Love
JOHN CROMER, the hero of Pilcrow, Adam Mars-Jones’ new novel, is the son of a British Air Commander father and a snobby mother who’s insecure about her class standing.
MoreReliable Penpals
IN THE REALM of 20th-century American literature, the collected correspondence of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell is among the most important sets of letters that we have between two poets.
MoreWhen Arthur Met Paul
In 1873, when French poet Arthur Rimbaud was staying in London with his
more famous lover Paul Verlaine, the spark-striking and strategically
untruthful nineteen-year-old added two years to his age so that he
could pass through a set of doors normally closed to minors. …
MorePlaces in the Notebook
IN HIS INTRODUCTION to Big Trips, Raphael Kadushin-a senior editor for the book’s publisher, the University of Wisconsin Press-affirms his hope that the sixteen entries in this anthology will address two unfortunate tendencies in today’s travel writing.
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The Choice of Skin
… Skin Lane, set in 1967 London, centers on Mr F, as the book calls him, a 46-year-old man who is a cutter at a furrier’s. His solitary, regimented life is disturbed by a recurring dream of a dead, dark-haired, white-skinned boy hanging in his bathtub.
MoreHello, South of France
“THE MIDDLE WEST is nowhere; an abstract no-where. However earnestly writers proud of being natives of it may endeavor to give it form and character, it remains out of focus, amorphous, and a mystery,” wrote Glenway Wescott in the introductory essay to his collection of stories Goodbye, Wisconsin, originally published in 1928 and recently reissued in a beautiful edition by Borderland Books.
MoreThe Look of Gay Liberation
… Paradoxically, most subjects of the early photographs of Gay Liberation, while out enough to be photographed, were not named in any caption and are thus anonymous. However, I was able to identify a number of the people in the “Come Out!” photograph, and even tracked down a number to get their recollections about the photo shoot.
MoreTying the Not: How They Got Prop 8
… An analysis of how the pro-8 forces succeeded reveals a campaign of misinformation and unlikely alliances, one that took years of planning dating back to at least the mid-1990’s. It also reveals a shrewd, media-savvy, and well-funded grassroots organization that understood California’s complex geographic and political landscape.
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Tomb with a View
Forster’s legacy and prominence have soared since his death, threatening to eclipse many of his Bloomsbury peers and certainly eclipsing the reputation of Joseph Conrad, say, whom Forster revered as “our greatest living novelist,” or George Bernard Shaw, called by Forster “our greatest living writer” some time later. …
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