Category: Lit-Crit

Revolt on Mount Parnassus: An Allegory in Copy/Paste

Introduction

PARIS – AUGUST, 1870 – An incorrigible, horrible genius. A fifteen year-old! disembarks at Rue de Maubeuge. A concussion of uncombed hair infested with a plague of lice. Soiled clothing. A homicidal cupid with the enormous hands of a strangler. A smarmy smirk, perfect skin, a beautiful terror with … Read the rest

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Keeping Henry Thoreau Around

Henry David Thoreau and Walden came early into my life, thanks to my mother, a boldly independent career woman who must have felt oppressed by her era’s strictures of feminine married domesticity. She had a favorite quote from Walden that she would paraphrase liberally whenever the topic of housework came … Read the rest

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Updike on 43rd Street

A literary biography ought to possess a voice and attitude that reflects and complements the literary voice and attitude of its subject. Leon Edel’s life of Henry James is prim and probing, with an energy that gradually accumulates into stately magnificence. Gerald Nicosia’s biography of Jack Kerouac is passionate, melancholy … Read the rest

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Double Negative by Ivan Vladislavic



Double Negative by Ivan Vladislavic begins, a hapless 80s-era hipster in South Africa named Neville Lister is listing badly:

Just when I started to learn something, I dropped out of university, although this makes it sound more decisive than it was.

He works a brainless job, pretentiously puffs on a … Read the rest

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