Assessing Joan Didion’s legacy reveals a fascination with the nature of narrative that often supersedes the author’s subjects.
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Posted inNonfiction
Dispatch from Puerto Nowhere
Robert Lopez examines what it means to be an assimilated American from Puerto Rico, and what was gained and lost in the process.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Sharp Women Writers: An Interview With Michelle Dean
Cultural critic Michelle Dean discusses her new book Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion. Topics covered range from emotionally fraught book reviews of Susan Sontag to male blowback against the famous first line of Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer to how horrified Elizabeth Hardwick was by her friend Adrienne […]
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Reading List, Story, Uncategorized
Pages You Can Dance To: A Book List
Either Martin Mull or Frank Zappa or Elvis Costello once said writing about music is as pointless as dancing about architecture. Which doesn’t account for how I’ve danced to all these books.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction
The Changeling
Alexander Chee considers the ways in which answering the question, “What are you?” turned him into a writer.
Posted inNonfiction
Unearthing the Story: An Interview with Peter Hessler
The New Yorker writer describes his career’s circuitous route, from his start as a struggling fiction writer to becoming a China correspondent, and now the author of a new book about the Arab Spring.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Changeling
A personal essay in which How to Write an Autobiographical Novel author Alexander Chee considers how answering the question, “What are you?” turned him into a writer.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
How I Got My Shrink Back
An entanglement with her shrink-stalking protege teaches Susan Shapiro something about forgiveness.
Posted inNonfiction
In the Country of Women
Amid badass women and endless stories, a young California writer comes of age in the orange groves as the Golden State comes into its own.
Posted inNonfiction
My Year on a Shrinking Island
Former baker Michael Mount explores the interplay of community, cookie dough, and changing terrain on Martha’s Vineyard
