War was Vonnegut’s subject, but not one that came easy to him. It was, it seems, a subject that got hold of him, one that wouldn’t let him go until he tossed out all his beliefs and saw the Second World War as it really was…
http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-03-25/books/war-and-pieces/
Michael Thomas: Man Gone Down
You’re bright, thirty-something, and haven’t lived up to your promise. You wanted to be a poet. Now you teach writing and can’t finish your novel. You live in brownstone Brooklyn, in a neighborhood of young white professionals where you are stared at for your skin color. You have three small children and can’t come up […]
Read More ...Out of Milk? Live With It
Equality between men and women was the feminist ideal. It was our utopia. Now that my husband and I have achieved something like it, on a one-household scale, I can see that in some ways it’s a pain in the ass. Equality is terrifically inefficient […]
Read More ...Germaine Greer: Shakespeare’s Wife
Germaine Greer leads a double life. We know her best as a tricky, funny, impossible feminist provocateur, liable to stand up at any moment and announce that contraception is bad, female genital mutilation is acceptable in an African context, or that Princess Diana was a “devious moron.” But she’s also a professor of literature who […]
Read More ...Explorer, Archaeologist, Librarian, Spy
Our 5-year-old daughter is angry. At bedtime we’ve been reading out loud to her from Donald Duck comics. But now her 8-year-old brother is jeering, “Girls can’t be in the Junior Woodchucks. The Junior Woodchucks are for boys. The Chickadees are for girls.” That seems fair: one scouting group for boys, one for girls. But since the stories in the comics are never about the Chickadees, all my daughter can do is withdraw in tears of frustration. She doesn’t belong to the club that counts….
Read More ...Michael Chabon’s Open Gate
In the Washington Post, I talk to Michael Chabon about genre, literature, and his adventure story “Gentlemen of the Road.”
Read More ...Jewish Detective Stories: A Talk with Michael Chabon and Daniel Mendelsohn
What constitutes a cultural identity? Is it connected to home, to language, to being part of a group, to being on TV? Is it tied to history? Can history be rewritten? Novelist Michael Chabon and culture critic Daniel Mendelsohn have both published books in which they look at identity and its representation through the lens […]
Read More ...Loneliness and Belonging: Miranda July
Much of Miranda July’s work, from her early videos and performances to her recent film “Me and You and Everyone We Know” and her current collection of short stories, “No One Belongs Here More Than You,” has explored loneliness and isolation and their opposites, belonging and community. Alongside her own […]
Read More ...Where They Buried the Survivors
One of the many things science fiction and Westerns have in common is the dream of an empty world. Cormac McCarthy’s 1992 novel All the Pretty Horses is a stunning tale of open grasslands, lava fields, swamps, river fords, overhanging rock ledges (convenient for camping), and mountains in the distance. Its heroes, two boys who […]
Read More ...