culture March 22, 2017

The Walk

The idea was to go for a walk: the baby in a stroller, the child by the hand, the path straight and scenic, the weather warm and breezy, the family fine and in good humor,But the dog got too hot and lay panting on the ground, and they'd forgotten again to bring the water. The baby (Kryptonite, they called her) was in one of her moods, weeping on and off, refusing to sit in the stroller, tugging off her hat and throwing it into the dirt, so that they had to stop every few yards, retrieve the hat, pass the baby from one parent to the other because she wanted only to be with the father while he, exhausted ("weakened," he said), kept handing her back.

The idea was to go for a walk: the baby in a stroller, the child by the hand, the path straight and scenic, the weather warm and breezy, the family fine and in good humor.

But the dog got too hot and lay panting on the ground, and they'd forgotten again to bring the water. The baby (Kryptonite, they called her) was in one of her moods, weeping on and off, refusing to sit in the stroller, tugging off her hat and throwing it into the dirt, so that they had to stop every few yards, retrieve the hat, pass the baby from one parent to the other because she wanted only to be with the father while

print Feb/Mar 2017

Words Into Action

I can't think of any book that documents the pre-11/9 moment more vividly and belligerently than Paul Beatty's satirical novel The Sellout (2015). Since Trump's election I have been imagining Beatty with his head in his hands somewhere, and I've been summoning him. His anger, humor, and sarcasm are exactly what we're going to need to get through the next however many years. Beatty's protagonist, in order to save his disappearing town, paints a three-inch-thick strip of white paint around its borders. We must do the same, for this is the hour for extreme measures. Time to build the bunker, fill

fiction Sept/Oct/Nov 2015

The Divine Comedies

Joy Williams wears sunglasses day and night. She does not own a computer and she corresponds by postcard. She can be irascible in interviews (one poor interviewer admitted he “cringe[d]” to publish the interview uncut because of her little digs at him). A real live kook, she is widely admired by writers with even the faintest interest in the avant-garde, and her books have been finalists for major prizes, including the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, because she is a fiery writer with a sharp humor and a dark energy and because her sentences are weird, funny, and full of emotion.

fiction Sept/Oct/Nov 2011

Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner

Ben Lerner’s first novel, coming on the heels of three outstanding poetry collections, is a darkly hilarious examination of just how self-conscious, miserable, and absurd one man can be. Leaving the Atocha Station tells the story of Adam, a poet on a prestigious yearlong fellowship in Madrid. It is a quintessential modernist expat novel: Adam does very little but walk from celebrated place to celebrated place, brooding, doubting himself, half-understanding what’s said to him, and being increasingly ugly to the people around him. Typically, the expat novel is the ideal petri dish for an isolated

Deb Olin Unferth