After reading the story The Shell Collector when it came out in 2002 I xeroxed it and gave it out to everyone I knew. It’s just one of those stories that is so good you want to share it. I find this to be true of everything I’ve read of Anthony Doerr’s. In general his [...]
Category Archives: Fiction
Writers’ Houses
August 4, 2010 – 12:11 pm
The ever lovely M + E who design pretty things for people like the Magnetic Fields, Passion Pit and Phoenix have made four two-color posters for the launch of the new website Writers’ Houses: Where Stories Live. The website is a guide to writers’ homes all over the world, for both historical and [...]
Jennifer Egan
July 8, 2010 – 10:53 am
Jennifer Egan’s latest book, A Visit From the Goon Squad is a collection of short stories told in many different voices that come together to look at a group of people and the passage of time. Each story could easily stand alone, as did “A to B,” which was published in Dossier and “Safari,” which [...]
John Waters Role Models
June 30, 2010 – 2:15 pm
John Waters’ new book, Role Models is a collection of intimate profiles of some of his favorite people. With Waters, you obviously expect the chosen role models to be colorful and he doesn’t disappoint. Among some of the characters are Tennessee Williams, the singer Johhny Mathis, a gay reality-porn auteur, a lesbian stripper called Lady [...]
Shirley Jackson
June 24, 2010 – 9:35 pm
I must have been nine the first time I read Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery.” I remember thinking deliciously that there was no happy ending, no remorse, and no moral to the story. Of course, that’s not exactly true but the chilling look that she gives to the human condition and in other stories, [...]
O Fallen Angel
May 16, 2010 – 9:17 pm
O Fallen Angel (Chiasmus) is the first novel by Kate Zambreno, and, if she continues in this vein throughout her career, she’s going to start a lot of fights.
The novel describes a older suburban woman named Mommy, her suicidal daughter Maggie, and a homeless and insane man named Malachi. The characters don’t have conversations, and [...]
Alice Walker’s Garden
May 14, 2010 – 3:25 pm
I know Alice Walker won the Pulitzer for her fiction, but I’m all about her essays and her poems. I’m particularly obsessed with her womanist essays from the 1970’s. She is rad for so many reasons that I can’t begin to mention here, if you’re curious about the amazing life she has led go to [...]
