‘The history of the West is a deeply turbulent one… that kept the living population in a constant state of unrest. I thought this constant state of unrest must be true for the dead as well.’
Ryan Chapman
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Story
Lock Your Doors?
A new homeowner reads two novels that revolve around surreal home-invasion scenarios, and considers what it is about his house that scares him.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story, Writing
Sam Lipsyte on ‘Mental Archery,’ the Quest for Certainty, and Where All the Money Went
“It’s difficult to say what you really think. You’re too aware of the traps, the dead ends, the cul-de-sacs of utterance: all the ways we let cliché steer us in a certain direction, force us to say not quite what we mean…”
Posted inBooks, Profiles & Interviews, Science Fiction, Story
Working Through the Apocalypse: An Interview with Ling Ma
In Ling Ma’s “Severance” — a novel she began to write after getting laid off, while living partly on severance pay — the characters keep going to work, even though they know it’s the end of the world.
Posted inBooks, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Your Best Work Comes from Scaring Yourself
Essayist Chelsea Hodson had to give herself permission to be uncomfortable.