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31 Books in 30 Days: Elizabeth Taylor on Yunte Huang
In this 31 Books in 30 Days series leading up to the March 14, 2019 announcement of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle award winners, NBCC board members review the thirty-one finalists. Today, NBCC...
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31 Books in 30 Days: Gregg Barrios on Rigoberto González
In the 31 Books in 30 Days series leading up to the March 14 announcement of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle award winners, NBCC board members review the 31 finalists. Today, NBCC board member...
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31 Books in 30 Days: Carlin Romano on Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
In the 31 Books in 30 Days series leading up to the March 14 announcement of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle award winners, NBCC board members review the 31 finalists. Today, NBCC board member...
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31 Books in 30 Days: Mary Ann Gwinn on Steve Coll
In the 31 Books in 30 Days series leading up to the March 14 announcement of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle award winners, NBCC board members review the 31 finalists. Today, NBCC board member...
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Virginia Woolf’s Depression Shouldn’t Define Her
In the course of my research for my new novel, in which I bring Virginia Woolf back to life in modern-day New York, I set out one cool clear morning to find her books in Manhattan bookstores. Borders...
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Remembering the Birth of Gabo on the Birthday of Gabriel García Márquez
Gabo Is Adjective, Substantive, Verb In which García Márquez is transformed into the famous author of One Hundred Years of Solitude * Ramón Illán Bacca: There’s gabolatría on the part of critics,...
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The Vulnerability of Home on an Afflicted Planet, From California to Calcutta
In August, heavy showers lash the city of my birth, Calcutta. From the Chowringhee neighborhood of central Calcutta, Rabindranath Tagore wrote in a poem dated August 20th, 1928 (translated by K. K....
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Who Needs Astrology?
I remember the small, round tin lunchbox my mum packed for me with rice and chicken vibrating in my hands as we made the weekly drive in our clunky, baby blue Volvo, from Summer Hill to Hoxton Park to...
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31 Books in 30 Days: Walton Muyumba on Terrance Hayes
In the 31 Books in 30 Days series leading up to the March 14 announcement of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle award winners, NBCC board members review the 31 finalists. Today, NBCC board member...
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31 Books in 30 Days: Kerri Arsenault on Francisco Cantú
In the 31 Books in 30 Days series leading up to the March 14 announcement of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle award winners, NBCC board members review the 31 finalists. Today, NBCC board member...
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How Deborah Levy is Getting Me Through New Motherhood
Since my daughter was born (four months ago, at the time of writing this) I’ve been thinking about rooms. The ones we enter in the early days of motherhood, the ones we exit, the ones that envelop us,...
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An Attempt to See Paris Through the Eyes of Georges Perec
Date: January 9, 2019 Time: 2:10-5:00 pm Location: Café de la Mairie Weather: Cold and gray I’m in Paris for a week, and I have been sitting in a lot of cafes. Yesterday I sat in cafés for six hours,...
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31 Books in 30 Days: Yahdon Israel on Nell Irvin Painter
In the 31 Books in 30 Days series leading up to the March 14 announcement of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle award winners, NBCC board members review the 31 finalists. Today, NBCC board member...
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Digging in to the Queer Subtext of My Fair Lady
“Wouldn’t it be marvelous if we were homosexuals?” Rex Harrison, the actor who played Henry Higgins in the 1956 Broadway version of My Fair Lady joked to the show’s playwright, Alan Lerner. They were...
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31 Books in 30 Days: Charles Finch on Adam Zagajewski
In the 31 Books in 30 Days series leading up to the March 14, 2019 announcement of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle award winners, NBCC board members review the thirty-one finalists. Today, NBCC...
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I Blame My First Marriage on Jane Austen
I blame my first marriage on Jane Austen. Elizabeth Bennet married for gratitude and esteem, and these were exactly the feelings I had for my first husband. If they were good enough for Elizabeth, why...
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31 Books in 30 Days: Katherine A. Powers on Tara Westover
In the 31 Books in 30 Days series leading up to the March 14, 2019 announcement of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle award winners, NBCC board members review the thirty-one finalists. Today, NBCC...
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31 Books in 30 Days: Michael Schaub on Rachel Kushner
In the 31 Books in 30 Days series leading up to the March 14, 2019 announcement of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle award winners, NBCC board members review the thirty-one finalists. Today, NBCC...
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Thankfulness, Praise, and Ross Gay
Odes are songs of praise, to a person or an event or an object—a wedding poem, or epithalmium, is a kind of ode, as are a lot of nature poems. Often, an ode can be a way to meditate on what makes the...
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Honoré de Balzac’s Legendary Love Affair With His Anonymous Critic
In March of 1832, Honoré de Balzac received a letter at his Paris address. The postmark read Odessa—then a far distant city in the Ukraine—but there was no return address. He opened it, of course, and...
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