Who Decides the Mysterious Standard of Beauty?
Daniel Oz’s flash fable “Beauty Sleep” and Yonit Naaman’s prose poem “That’s What I Want” explore the challenge of overcoming the elusive, patriarchal standard of beauty.
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The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
Leonora Carrington’s novel revels in inconclusive ideas, surreal reimagining’s, and the peculiarities of human consciousness . . . The novel eludes any whiff of definitiveness, instead layering ideas and questions atop one another like blocks in a Jenga tower. Naturally, Carrington forces the reader to withdraw the first block.
Tending the Shared Garden of Immunity
In trying to understand immunity as concept and metaphor, Eula Biss’s 2014 book reveals the profound ethical dilemma that has always inscribed itself into the vaccination debate, which, at root, is about the relationship between self and other, between individual bodies and the social body.
The Failure of Familial Communication in Happiness, as Such
Natalia Ginzburg presents a family’s dysfunction as an engrossing emotional rollercoaster, yet manages to make her story both haunting and deeply human.
Levity and Storytelling in A Christmas Carol
With the indefinite article “a,” Dickens seems to declare that the story is not about a carol, but is, instead, itself a Christmas carol: a song for the season.
The Complicated Reality of Travel in Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
The stories of ZZ Packer’s 2003 collection often feature characters in new environments, struggling to navigate their changed surroundings; travel pervades the book, but its pieces refute fantasies in favor of more complex realities of what can happen on a journey.
Distance and Home
Writing, to me, is home. I grew up in a family of Cuban exiles. Every Sunday, they told stories about Cuba, a place I couldn’t touch or hear or smell, but that I could, at least in my mind, see. Writing forced me to look closer at these homes, to erase the distance between us.
Lying to Tell the Truth
Philippe Besson clearly wants to discourage his readers from mistaking his novelistic creation for straightforward autobiography. Equally, though, Besson prompts us to question our assumptions, to pay attention not only to the fictiveness of his novel, but also to the narrative quality of our own life stories.
Italo Calvino and the New Gods of Boston
The visibility or invisibility of a city’s parts is always in flux, but this year it was dizzying. In March and April, Boston felt like a ghost town—its trains, streets, and office buildings emptied. The students disappeared, and so did my neighbor, Gary, who didn’t have a home to hide in.