Incomprehensible and Ungraspable
“When I was a teacher, death always lingered in the back of my mind.”
Critical Essays
Pioneer Days
Willa Cather’s 1913 novel provides a vision of America that is at once familiar and completely foreign. As the novel revels in scenes of natural beauty and “simpler” times, it also warns us that such idealized visions of America were dangerous and violent all along.
Time’s Arrow and the Stories We Tell Ourselves
Martin Amis’ 1991 novel is principally a story about ideology, but it is also a story about denial, and the lengths we will go to justify our own hateful actions.
Abstraction and Legacy in Bluebeard and So Much Blue
In filling his 2017 novel with similarities to Kurt Vonnegut’s 1987 work, Percival Everett initiates a dialogue on abstract art.
Realism and the Weird in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Story We Used to Tell”
When read together, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s tale reveals the realism peeking behind the frame of Shirley Jackson’s, and Jackson’s short story illuminates the otherworldly horror plaguing the narrator of Perkins Gilman’s.
Isolation and The Wild Hunt
Emma Seckel wields multiple strategies of constraint to expand her novel’s speculative possibilities and, most importantly, establish a thoroughly compelling set of character relationships that infuse the supernatural stakes with organic urgency.
Human Blues and Reproductive Self-Determination
Elisa Albert’s new novel is a potent reminder that the body and the voice are inseparable, and that both demand autonomy.
Perspective in The Dark
In John McGahern’s 1965 novel, the point-of-view changes from first-person to second person to third person to no point of view at all. As the point of view shifts, the narrator seems to be seeing himself through different lenses, just as he is redefining himself through his choices.
Boomerang / Bumerán’s Exploration of the Importance of Writing
Immediately after opening Achy Obejas’ 2021 collection we see how she undertakes the mission of writing words that could still save her, us, our world.