It was almost two am. I was in the common room of my college dorm, reading The Story of a New Name, the second book in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan series. It was Saturday; I had given up a night of partying and fun with friends to sit alone and read. Three of my friends came in and I was so engrossed in the book that I didn’t notice until they were a foot away from me. Two of them were visibly tipsy, eyes narrowed by tiredness. K leaned in and hugged me, relaxing all her body weight onto my shoulders, limbs loosening into sleep.
“Okay let’s go” the other two said and hoisted K up from me.
“Get high with that yet?” one of them says, looking at the battered copy lying in my lap.…
In most novels that have beautiful nature writing, nature only acts as a backdrop, a pretty painting and landscape to hold the real stories between people. I’d be spellbound reading those well-drawn details of beauty, of peace and green and spring. But The Overstory by Richard Powers takes it to another level, making those descriptions seem inadequate and superficial for something so grand and miraculous: trees. In response to the Overstory, the trees would say to the Romantic poets– Shelley, Byron, Keats, “You only like me for my looks? Nothing else?” Powers gives us that something else. He illuminates for us their history, biology, personifies their desires, fears, hopes, and very soul, beyond merely their commercial or aesthetic appeal. It brings forth the forest as an alive, dynamic system that’s buzzing with life and its own dramas at every moment, inside and underground.…
Perhaps no one has phrased this better than Michael Burkett, also known as “Fat Mike,” the lead singer of NOFX and co-founder of the San Francisco-based indie label Fat Wreck Chords. “I signed a fucking band; I didn’t sign an artist!” Fat Mike is quoted as saying in the last chapter of Dan Ozzi’s book Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy that Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994-2007).
“If I’m gonna give you hundreds of thousands of dollars, help me sell the fucking records!” The punk singer and businessman is describing his frustration with Against Me! (the Florida band known for songs like Sink, Florida, Sink and Baby, I’m an Anarchist!) and their choice of album artwork for Former Clarity, featuring a black and white photograph of a single palm tree, which according to Fat Mike, was not a cover that would sell records.…
Despite being written and published decades apart, Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions and Shena McAuliffe’s The Good Echo bear similarities in how each novel breaks the fourth wall in order to engross the reader. While the novels also have differences in this approach (Vonnegut’s work utilizes drawings while McAuliffe’s novel utilizes a father’s dentistry notes where his story is told in his journal’s footnotes), the most notable similarity is that each novel utilizes a first-person narrator who at first seems disassociated from the story but slowly becomes more and more involved. In the case of Breakfast of Champions, the first-person narrator can be interpreted as the author; in The Good Echo, the first-person narrator is 12-year old Ben, the deceased son of Cliff and Frances Bell, who died from a botched root canal performed by his father.…
As a student in the Sierra Nevada University MFA program, I recently got to sit down with Suzanne Roberts to discuss her latest book, the memoir Bad Tourist (University of Nebraska Press, 2020). Beyond being a writing instructor, Roberts is an accomplished travel writer, named “The Next Great Travel Writer” by National GeographicTraveler Magazine. Her previous book Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail (Bison Books, 2012) won the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award. Roberts has also published four volumes of poetry.
Even though I have had classes with Roberts and have attended literary events where she was in attendance, until I read Bad Tourist, I can’t really say that I knew her. To be honest, she intimidated me: she is a demanding instructor, and while friendly, she is unabashedly forthright.…
Thin Places: Essays from the In Between by Jordan Kisner
On the edge, where Columbus and Chicago Avenues meet in Minneapolis, a familiar sign is plunged past concrete, into layers of soil. The background is a deep red, like blood. The letters on the sign are white and centered. Stop, it said, and cars and bikes and pedestrians did. When I came near the sign, I noticed it was different. Stop, it said. Yet, underneath this word a sheet of white typing paper was attached at its edges with electric tape. On the paper were the words, …killing us. A block over from where I stood, George Floyd was murdered by a policeman just days before. The officer’s knee rested on George’s neck, even as George cried, “I can’t breathe,” and the crowd pleaded with the office to stop, to no avail.…
The City of Hate, the city that titles Timothy S. Miller’s forthcoming novel, is Dallas. It’s a relatively modern version. Dealey Plaza buzzes with tourists come to see the Sixth Floor Museum and relive the events of President Kennedy’s assassination, but this Dallas still has answering machines, printed glossy photographs, and storefront bookstores as (mostly) viable business models. More striking, though, is the emptiness within this busy, thriving city. It’s not the buzzing, numb kind of empty, but an emptiness that writhes and howls and demands to be filled.
We walk the streets of Dallas in the shoes of Hal Scott, a cynical, triggered alcoholic clinging to sobriety by his fingernails. Hal, himself empty, fills up his inner monologue with paranoid speculations of other people’s lives.…
