“Tata Jesus is Bangala!” declares the Reverend every Sunday at the end of his sermon. More and more, mistrusting his interpreters, he tries to speak in Kikongo. He throws back his head and shouts these words to the sky, while his lambs sit scratching themselves in wonder. Bangala means something precious and dear. But the [...]
For a writer rushing to the defense of entertainment (”…I read for entertainment, and I write to entertain. Period.”), Michael Chabon doesn’t seem remotely interested in entertaining readers with his essay collection Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands (McSweeney Books, 2008).
One of the great joys of Chabon’s fiction is narrative voice, a [...]
It’s that time of year again: malls swath every column with garland. Syrupy Christmas carols drip from speakers in every store. And grocers stack displays of canned pumpkin, packaged stuffing mix, and french-fried onions and canned green beans. Yep, it’s NaNoWriMo.
Wha?
National Novel Writing Month. For the last ten years, the founders of this group have [...]
While the second half of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (by Stieg Larsson) moves considerably more quickly than the first, it still never engaged me the way a great book should.
The characters were almost uniformly two-dimensional; only the title character, Lisbeth, shows any personal growth. Many of the plot twists were either gratuitous or [...]
John Leonard, one of the finest critics ever to comment on American literature and culture, died Wednesday. Whether he was reviewing a book, a film or a television series, he deeply questioned both the quality of the craft and the significance of the work in our moment.
My introduction to his work came from his appearances [...]
“We didn’t in the light; we didn’t in darkness.”
From the short story “We Didn’t,” by Stuart Dybek
The opening paragraph consists of a litany of places where the protagonist and his girlfriend didn’t make love. It’s a masterful use of narrative voice. The list establishes the inevitable arc of the story as well as the story’s [...]
I remember the thrill of standing in line for the first presidential election in which I participated in person (my first eligible election, I was away at college and voted absentee).
My polling place was the elementary school I attended, and the line wound all the way down one hallway and back again, so we were [...]
Stieg Larsson’s debut novel wowed some high-placed critics since its translation into English earlier this year. It received high praise in places like the Sunday Times and the New York Times. Maureen Corrigan’s review on NPR’s Fresh Air convinced me to buy the book.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has all the elements of a [...]