“The American narrative of a hard-luck individual working hard, doing the right thing, and finding success for it is so deep in me, my life story so tempting as potential evidence for that narrative’s validity,” Sarah Smarsh writes of her own upwardly mobile economic and intellectual trajectory, “that I probably sometimes err on the side of conveying a story in which I’m an individual beating the odds with her own determination.”
Books
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
John Cheever’s sad Christmas story is ideal Advent reading
The simultaneous pull of love and sadness is pure Cheever and permeates his Christmas story.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The roots of American conservatism
William F. Buckley Jr. was more than a prolific writer: He was the brains and coalescing force of a post-World War II philosophy that gradually became known as “conservatism” and which culminated with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan as president.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Andre Dubus’s challenging but beautifully written stories have been reissued
Dubus was an irascible, loyal, loving, smoking, hard-drinking, hard-punching, tender man, who demanded much of himself and others.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: ‘Refuge in Hell’ is a Dante-esque journey into our prison system
Nowhere is the contrast between Christian love and hellish indifference more stark than in our prison system.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Real news about the Trump White House
Bob Woodward offers a grim portrait of a presidential administration that seems increasingly unhinged.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
R. O. Kwon’s debut novel delves into the loss of faith and the absence it leaves behind
R. O. Kwon’s novel startles and unsettles with its insights, as its characters act to prove their beliefs to themselves and to the world, with explosive results.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Machado de Assis, the ‘writer’s Catholic writer’
The stories of Machado de Assis let us imagine our way into familiar perspectives and situations from unexpected vantages that enlarge and transform our sense of what is and what can be in this life, and the next.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Great poetry that makes no sense: America’s 2018 Poetry Roundup
And reading poetry, like the books in our 2018 poetry review, can be a great way to not make perfect sense of a thing, but to just be with a thing.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: New Orleans at 300
After 300 years, New Orleans remains one of our most unique—and troubled—cities.