Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on The Train and Into the Water, reflects on two unreliable things: narrators and memory.
fiction
Posted inEditor's Pick
Literature by the Numbers
In Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve, data journalist Ben Blatt takes a mathematical approach to writers of fiction.
Posted inFiction, Writing
Why We Still Can’t Quit F. Scott Fitzgerald
With a new “lost” short story published by The New Yorker, the bottle is just about dry.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes
Screw You, and the Icelandic Pony You Rode In On
Novelist Nell Zink, in n+1, takes readers on a rambling but sharp journey through writers and novels of the 20th century in the name of exploring realism, compassion, and justice in fiction.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Quotes
One Novelist Remembers Her Moment
The cover was striking: it showed a syringe. On the back cover one character leaned over a table, snorting cocaine. The calls from radio stations began, the advertising spots, the letters, above all the letters. Girls telling me about their first acid trip. Gay guys who’d been thrown out of their houses. Girls in love […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Failure to Cooperate
The indignity and discomfort of being accused of theft: a short story about a long shift at the coffee shop everyone loves to hate.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Steven’s First Limo Ride
Steven is both the young protagonist’s stuffed frog and new little brother in this piece of short fiction about a troubled family, told from the blunt, optimistic point of view of a 10-year-old.
Posted inNonfiction
Xenu’s Paradox: The Fiction of L. Ron Hubbard and the Making of Scientology
Alec Nevala-Lee, author of Astounding, a forthcoming book on the history of science fiction, digs into the writing career of L. Ron Hubbard, gaining new insights into the life of the controversial founder of dianetics and the origins and nature of Scientology itself.
Posted inFiction, Nonfiction, Quotes
Obama by the Books
In Vulture, book critic Christian Lorentzen suggests we dispense with terms like “postmodern” and “postwar” when discussing novels, and instead analyze them relative to the presidential administrations under which they were released. What will we mean when someday we refer to Obama Lit? I think we’ll be discussing novels about authenticity, or about “problems of […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Considering the Novel in the Age of Obama
Have “postmodern” and “postwar” have become outmoded as classifications for novels? Lorentzen suggests it’s more useful to look at trends in fiction relative to the administration they were released under. During Obama’s, he says, novelists looked to answer questions of authenticity. During Trump’s, he anticipates dystopian narratives.