satire

The Fairytale Redux: On Patrick deWitt’s “Undermajordomo Minor”
|

The Fairytale Redux: On Patrick deWitt’s “Undermajordomo Minor”

The last thing the world needs is another reimagining of the fairy tale. It has been done from every angle: straightforward, post-modern, and (yawn) from the villain’s perspective. So it was with some wariness that I approached Patrick deWitt’s new novel, Undermajordomo Minor, a fairy tale of sorts that follows young Lucien “Lucy” Minor as…

The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “The Know-It-All” by Jeff Spitzer

The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “The Know-It-All” by Jeff Spitzer

  Some narrators announce their unreliability in the opening sentences of a short story (see Matt Sumell’s “All Lateral”), and in this way their skewed vision of the world serves as a stylistic lead, drawing readers in. In “The Know-It-All,” from the latest New Ohio Review, Jeff Spitzer creates a narrator whose reliability is revealed…

Round Down: The Complicated Response to Charlie Hebdo

As anyone paying even the remotest of attention to the news this past week, we all know this is a sobering time for journalists, satirists, publishing professionals, and supporters of free speech. The brutal murder of staff and police at Charlie Hebdo magazine offices by Muslim extremists, along with violent ricochets all over the greater metropolitan…