The Functions of Art
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Quotation
Reading in the Midst of COVID-19
I MISS THE LIBRARY: AND OTHER THOUGHTS ON QUARANTINE READING LIFE When it comes to reading, read whatever you’re able to get through without finding yourself distracted or filled with an overwhelming sense of dread. If that means listening to audiobooks because you just can’t focus on reading a page, so be it! Need to
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On Margaret Atwood’s “The Blind Assassin”
Commentary on one of my all-time favorite Big Books: The Blind Assassin (2000) is a multilayered and deftly plotted work of autobiographical and historical fiction set in 20th-century Canada. In just the first few pages, layers of family history and mystery unfurl by way of a trifecta of memoir flashback, newspaper clippings and novel-within-a-novel narratives.
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A New Newspaper Column on Crime Books
Detective novels are, for me, a sort of literary comfort food; a respite from real life — in which problems aren’t always neatly wrapped up — and a chance to walk in the sensibly shod footsteps of a crime-solver . . . , analyzing clues and side-eyeing witnesses and, ultimately, making the world a tiny
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Quotation: Elena Ferrante: Storytelling as Power
There is one form of power that has fascinated me ever since I was a girl, even though it has been widely colonized by men: the power of storytelling. Telling stories really is a kind of power, and not an insignificant one. Stories give shape to experience, sometimes by accommodating traditional literary forms, sometimes by
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Quotation: Susan Sontag Was a Monster
“She took things too seriously. She was difficult and unyielding. That’s why Susan Sontag’s work matters so much even now.” This is how I see her monstrosity: residing not in whether she was or was not likeable, but in her relentlessness, and her refusal to pander. The word ‘monster’ comes from the Latin monere, to
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Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
17 Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes You Never Hear While best known for his “I Have a Dream” speech, King’s legacy included much more than that. Memorable words here.
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Life Stories
“Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to.” ― Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead
Novelist Lev Grossman on Narrative
Lev Grossman: My depression helped inspire the Magicians trilogy – Salon.com. I think literary critics — of whom you’re one and I’m another — are much better at describing beauty on the sentence level than we are at talking about the grace of a narrative twist or wonderful pacing or the thrilling tension that a
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