Category: Literary
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Jewish-Arab Coexistence and the Lost Cosmopolitanism
In André Aciman’s 1994 memoir Out of Egypt, he recounts the first meeting of his two grandmothers in an Alexandria, Egypt fish market. They two women discover they are both of Italian ancestry, by way of Ottoman Turkey, and as they talk further, “it suddenly occurred to them that of the six or seven languages…
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New Nonfiction Story in The MacGuffin
I have a new nonfiction story in the Spring 2015 issue of The MacGuffin literary journal titled Fin de Siècle. It is a memoir piece about growing up in Bridgewater, Mass., in the 1970s. You can order a copy at the NewPages Magazine Webstore.
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Review of Arts & Entertainments
I published a review of Christopher Beha’s second novel Arts & Entertainments in the January print edition of First Things. The review is now available online. Beha, a deputy editor at Harper’s Magazine, is a fine novelist and his debut work What Happened to Sophie Wilder? is worth checking out as well.
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Philip K. Dick, the Unreliability of Language & the Writer’s Struggle
The following is an email from Roman Tsivkin to myself regarding an essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books titled “Writing is a Lonely Business: James McKimmey, Philip K. Dick, and the Lost Art of Author Correspondence” by Jason Starr. I think Roman’s letter is both an informative riposte to the essay, as well…
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Book Review for First Things Magazine
In the March print edition of First Things I reviewed the book The Fine Delight: Postconciliar Catholic Literature by Nicholas Ripatrazone. The review has been posted online, but to read the entire article you need a First Things subscription or must pay $1.99. Ripatrazone has written that my 2011 essay in The Millions titled “Where Have…
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French, Marcel Proust & Justice Stephen Breyer
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer recently gave an interview to the French literary journal La Revue des Deux Mondes (a review that Proust once wrote for) where he revealed his love of French literature and how he learned French by reading Marcel Proust‘s In Search of Lost Time in the original: “I read the Recherche…