Rachel Cusk’s Life of M and Fictionalizing the Other in Place of the Self There is always a buzz around a new Rachel Cusk novel—her name trends on Substack, The New Yorker drops an Instagram post, literary circles murmur. It’s well deserved excitement for an author who has spent over two decades making literary form …
Chris Murphy’s Crisis of the Common Good examines how the erosion of shared civic life affects and endangers us all. Last May, the Class of 2026 gathered on Foss for the final time listening to Wesleyan’s commencement speaker. Drenched, hungover, and awaiting their diplomas, many may not remember the equally drenched man who stood speaking before …
Italian author Vincenzo Latronico’s 2022 novel Perfection follows Anna and Tom, millennial university graduates whose vague left-wing politics are limited to Instagram stories condemning injustices in New York City. The couple moves to Berlin after viewing an online apartment listing, a shiny object that appears to be the key to a perfect new life. In …
I started college early at sixteen. At my graduation from Bard College at Simon’s Rock (an experimental early college program), I was surprised to receive an award for excellence in Languages and Literature. The award came with a certificate, a handshake, and a very nice hardcover copy of Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country. …
Vladimir Nabokov’s essay “Good Readers and Good Writers” formed the foundation of his literature classes taught at Cornell in the 1940s and 50s. In the essay, Nabokov argues that certain traits distinguish “good” readers from “bad” readers. A “good” reader, according to Nabokov, rereads books, has a robust imagination, and separates the fictional worlds in …
Read more “Bad Readers of the 21st Century: BookTok and the Commodification of the Novel”
Rachel Trousdale in conversation with Mahek Uttamchandani Rachel Trousdale is a professor of English at Framingham State University. Several of her poems have appeared in The Nation and The Yale Review. She is also the author of Nabokov, Rushdie, and the Transnational Imagination as well as Humor, Empathy, and Communication in Twentieth-Century American Poetry. More …
On Andre Carrington’s “The Black Fantastic” and Building Canons Canon-making has always been an exclusionary process. Any number of examples would elucidate this point: take Zora Neale Hurston’s long stint outside of the canon for her “lyricism” or, alternatively, how Charlotte Bronte published Jane Eyre under the pseudonym Currer Bell to avoid the backlash female …
Read more “The Politics of Canonicity and the Speculative (Re)turn to a “Minor Literature””
On Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection It is abundantly evident that we live in an age of unprecedented social division. Mainstream media on both sides of the aisle has belabored this point so thoroughly that it feels almost needless to say. Division as a sociological phenomenon is certainly not unique to our epoch; it is one of …
Read more “Enter the Void: Morality and Loneliness in the Digital Age”
Shon Faye’s Love in Exile in Conversation with bell hooks’ all about love Love. Elusive, yet desired by all. A transformative force central to life, possibly even the reason for living, and the epitome of what it means to be human. For years, the challenge of capturing love has shaped philosophy, art, social theory, music, …
The Art of Truth-seeking in Han Kang’s We Do Not Part A newborn’s white gown—never worn. Melting ice. A miniature forest of dark wood. Flashes of violence of Korean dictatorships. Two women holding tight to a white cloth sheet as they walk into the sea, like a funeral rite. How to account for loss—the kind …
