The Harper’s digital archive is a small and unsung national treasure, at least as far as I’m concerned; I’ve spent countless hours sifting through old issues, scanning for early work from familiar names and tracking down forgotten gems from authors whose bylines have largely faded. One such writer is Margot Hentoff, whose short story “Where Do […]
Anna Wiener
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Quotes
The Dreamy, Sensual, and Bizarre Folk Tales of Yoko Tawada
Yoko Tawada’s English-language publisher, New Directions, describes her slender book The Bridegroom Was a Dog in simple and straightforward terms: “A bizarre tale of passion and romance between a schoolteacher and a dog.” There is, of course, complexity to this tight and colorful novella (written in 1993, and translated from Japanese in 1998), in which the life of […]
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Angela Carter on Myth and Deception in Hollywood
Angela Carter’s short story “The Merchant of Shadows” first appeared in The London Review of Books in 1989. Set in Hollywood, the narrator is a young, male student conducting research on a famed but mysterious director. The story bends and twists, ricocheting between dark comedy, deep camp, and Carter’s signature surreal, Gothic sensibility. Carter was an ardent fan […]
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How Michael Cunningham Writes About the Pains, Pleasures, and Psychedelia of Childhood
Michael Cunningham’s short story “White Angel” (The New Yorker; paywalled) is a vibrant masterpiece in miniature about two young brothers in suburban Cleveland pursuing the promises and pleasures of the sixties. Told through the eyes of 9-year-old Robert, the story travels an elegant curve – from the wonder, joy, and power imbalance of the brothers’ […]
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Errors Renewed: James Salter on Children, Futurity, and Hope
James Salter’s Light Years (1975) is a generous, intimate portrayal of a family that bends and splinters under the weight of its own differences and desires. This book exacerbated anxieties about marriage that I didn’t even know I had; thankfully, the novel’s emotional devastation is delivered in seductive, glorious prose. In the passage below, a sort […]
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Improbable Seductions: The Unsparing Eye of Mary McCarthy
For those interested in origin stories, posthumous literary gossip, and New York City in the 1930s, look no further than Mary McCarthy’s Intellectual Memoirs (1992) – a candid and lively account of McCarthy’s early writing career and the intellectual and political scenes that fueled it. McCarthy’s observations are sharp and often quite searing; she spares no […]
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The Fierce and Misty Flood: Barbara Comyns on the Quiet Seduction
Barbara Comyns’s novel Our Spoons Came from Woolworths (1950) follows the doomed marriage of two young, bohemian artists during England’s Great Depression. The excerpt below is a simple, gentle seduction; I love the way in which the protagonist, Sophia, swiftly and casually dismisses her husband and her own sense of identity. The scene strikes me […]