Reviews and essays by Robert Fay.
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Vol.1 Brooklyn Links To My Essay
I was honored that the website Vol. 1 Brooklyn included a link to my new essay in The Rumpus. It was featured in their Morning Bites roundup. Check it out.
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My New Essay in The Rumpus
I have a piece up at The Rumpus today titled “The Dreams of a Shrinking Nation” which is both an essay on the Japanese mega-pop band Dreams Comes True (my wife is a big fan) as well as a light-hearted look at Japan’s current demographic problems. The occasion for the essay was an Oct. 1, 2011 appearance…
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The Odyssey of Anti-War Literature
I recently finished re-reading Homer’s The Iliad after many years. I was struck by a number of things, but primarily how Homer depicted war as both brutal and meaningful. Not only did he not sugar-coat bronze-age combat, he actually went into gruesome detail about how spears and swords devastate the human body. His detailed knowledge…
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Movie Trailer For Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’
On the road – Official trailer – (HD 1080p) by MK2diffusion William Burroughs got it right when he wrote Jack Kerouac “opened a million coffee shops and sold a million pairs of Levis.” Kerouac and his novel On The Road primed the culture for the Beats and later the ascension of the hippies and the 1960s counterculture. The actual literary influence of…
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As The Novel Lay Dying
Lately I’ve developed a tenderness for essays speculating about the “death of the novel,” or that inspiring sub-genre, “why write novels at all?” I suspect they are proof that the form still has a modicum of relevance; the very existence of such essays proves there is still something left to kill off. Contrast this with say, poetry,…
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A New Inquiry into the Habit
The New Inquiry dubs itself as a space to “enrich cultural and public life.” The site has received a lot of big-time attention in its short run and so far it seems to merit the hype. The editors, to my great surprise, recently featured a thoughtful interview with an Anglican nun named Sister Nancy Ruth. The interview touches…
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