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Fiction

Memory in Antonya Nelson’s Short Stories

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In Antonya Nelson’s short stories, I find the way time is handled to be intricately connected with how convincing the particular world is that she has created. While I liked many of the stories in her latest collections, Funny Once (2014) and Nothing Right (2009), there are some I enjoyed more than others. This is, perhaps, to be expected, but what stands out to me about the stories I liked best seems to have to do with memory and how it is recreated.

Memory in Antonya Nelson’s Short Stories Read More »

In Antonya Nelson’s short stories, I find the way time is handled to be intricately connected with how convincing the particular world is that she has created. While I liked many of the stories in her latest collections, Funny Once (2014) and Nothing Right (2009), there are some I enjoyed more than others. This is, perhaps, to be expected, but what stands out to me about the stories I liked best seems to have to do with memory and how it is recreated.

Of Animal Metaphors and the British Legacy: An Interview with Chigozie Obioma

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I have been looking for a way to capture what I feel is an elemental dilemma of the situation in Nigeria: Why is it that Nigeria can’t progress? We have abundant oil, a strong elite educated class, a sizable youth population… Why are we still backwards as a people? The issue I think lies in the foundation itself … [A] colonizing force came in and said, “Be a nation.” It is tantamount to the prophecy of a madman.

Of Animal Metaphors and the British Legacy: An Interview with Chigozie Obioma Read More »

I have been looking for a way to capture what I feel is an elemental dilemma of the situation in Nigeria: Why is it that Nigeria can’t progress? We have abundant oil, a strong elite educated class, a sizable youth population… Why are we still backwards as a people? The issue I think lies in the foundation itself … [A] colonizing force came in and said, “Be a nation.” It is tantamount to the prophecy of a madman.

On Memory and Mind-Swipes: An Interview with Robert James Russell

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The stories in Don’t Ask Me to Spell It Out, Robert James Russell’s new chapbook out this month from WhiskeyPaper Press, follow a narrator perpetually on the verge. Over the course of 12 interlinked vignettes we see him come of age and stumble, get up and brush it off, always moving toward a greater understanding of what it means to be a son, a friend, a lover, a man. Russell is a quintessentially midwestern writer, and those who attended the recent Voices of the Middle West literary festival in Ann Arbor may remember him as a critical force in that conference—he helped bring in Stuart Dybek as the keynote speaker and organized panels featuring writers such Alissa Nutting and Laura Kasischke.

On Memory and Mind-Swipes: An Interview with Robert James Russell Read More »

The stories in Don’t Ask Me to Spell It Out, Robert James Russell’s new chapbook out this month from WhiskeyPaper Press, follow a narrator perpetually on the verge. Over the course of 12 interlinked vignettes we see him come of age and stumble, get up and brush it off, always moving toward a greater understanding of what it means to be a son, a friend, a lover, a man. Russell is a quintessentially midwestern writer, and those who attended the recent Voices of the Middle West literary festival in Ann Arbor may remember him as a critical force in that conference—he helped bring in Stuart Dybek as the keynote speaker and organized panels featuring writers such Alissa Nutting and Laura Kasischke.

On Going Home

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At the age of thirty-two, I have done the impossible and returned home—not for a holiday or a funeral, but to set up residency in a region of the Florida Panhandle so remote that even Comcast Cable has declined the opportunity to overcharge us for Internet service. I say “impossible” because that’s how the saying goes, doesn’t it, that a person “can’t go home again”—or at least Thomas Wolfe and Joan Didion made compelling cases.

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At the age of thirty-two, I have done the impossible and returned home—not for a holiday or a funeral, but to set up residency in a region of the Florida Panhandle so remote that even Comcast Cable has declined the opportunity to overcharge us for Internet service. I say “impossible” because that’s how the saying goes, doesn’t it, that a person “can’t go home again”—or at least Thomas Wolfe and Joan Didion made compelling cases.

Brute Matter: Max Blecher’s “Adventures in Immediate Reality”

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Adventures in Immediate Irreality: No, not a shorthand for my recent trip to Las Vegas—though that is where I read Romanian writer Max Blecher’s 1936 novel, recently reissued by New Directions.

Brute Matter: Max Blecher’s “Adventures in Immediate Reality” Read More »

Adventures in Immediate Irreality: No, not a shorthand for my recent trip to Las Vegas—though that is where I read Romanian writer Max Blecher’s 1936 novel, recently reissued by New Directions.

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