nonfiction – Page 29 – Michigan Quarterly Review

nonfiction

Virtual Reality Is the Real…

We discover virtually ourselves and others through the language of the brain. And virtual reality is not a physical world but a language the brain receives and translates. And if virtual reality is a language, and God created the world, according to the Bible, by speaking “It is good” to the formless turned “formed,” perhaps we and our universe are virtual realities of a divine verbal order…

“The Female Body,” by Margaret Atwood

I agree, it’s a hot topic. But only one? Look around, there’s a wide range. Take my own, for instance. I get up in the morning. My topic feels like hell. I sprinkle it with water, brush parts of it, rub it with towels, powder it, add lubricant. I dump in the fuel and away goes my topic, my topical topic, my controversial topic, my capacious topic, my limping topic, my nearsighted topic, my topic with back problems, my badly-behaved topic, my vulgar topic, my outrageous topic, my aging topic, my topic that is out of the question and anyway still can’t spell, in its oversized coat and worn winter boots, scuttling along the sidewalk as if it were flesh and blood, hunting for what’s out there, an avocado, an alderman, an adjective, hungry as ever.

“Marilyn and the Literati,” by Jeffrey Meyers

Marilyn was a kind of touchstone for writers. Unsure of her own identity, she identified with others. She was warmly responsive to those who showed an interest in her, and the best authors appreciated her human qualities. The Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov was as handsome and sophisticated as Nikita Khrushchev was coarse and crude. He met Marilyn at a Hollywood party while he was working on the screenplay of Lolita in the spring of 1960, and examined her as if she were one of his exquisite butterflies. Stacy Schiff wrote that “in Vladimir’s recollection, ‘She was gloriously pretty, all bosom and rose’—and holding the hand of [her current lover] Yves Montand. Monroe took a liking to Vladimir, inviting the [Nabokovs] to a dinner, which they did not attend.

On “Suburban Gospel”: An Interview with Mark Beaver

“There’s a lot of male sexuality in this book, because I knew that if I was going to write about faith, I’d also have to write about the flesh—I think it would be dishonest to write about male adolescence without sexuality being an important component. So given my upbringing, that was the hardest part—it felt difficult, but necessary. When I was shopping the book around, one publisher told me he liked my book but wouldn’t be publishing it because female readers—the largest book-buying demographic—would find all the sexuality off-putting.”

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