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
David Shields is a puckish literary critic and Litkicks favorite whose epic 2010 book Reality Hunger proposed that creative writers may as well skip the pretense of fiction and simply write the truth, since that’s what readers value most in either fiction or non-fiction anyway. His latest book examines a … Read the rest
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
“Do we really want writers to be okay? Just okay?” That intriguing response is one of many I elicited from J. C. Hallman, author of B & Me: A True Story of Literary Arousal
I used to read short stories all the time. At one point, I was more into short stories than novels.
Well, why not? This was back when Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, Tama Janowitz, Lorrie Moore, John Updike, Cynthia Ozick, Alice Munro and William Trevor were all putting out stuff … Read the rest
D. G. Myers, a celebrated literary critic, professor and blogger, died quietly of cancer in late September. For many like me who only knew D. G. Myers through his writings and online presence, his death was no surprise. We had read about it on A Commonplace Blog or in Time … Read the rest
The past week was a rough ride on the literary Internet. Thursday brought the sudden death knell of HTMLGiant, a rollicking community website frequented by writers like Tao Lin, Zachary German, Megan Boyle, Noah Cicero, Marie Calloway and Blake Butler along with a wide cast of erratic contributors and … Read the rest
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
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