Every so often a book I have yet to read makes me nervous. I think this is a self-defense wall my writer-self intuitively constructs to steer wide of new voices that may influence me when I already have my own narrative voice locked into a project. This is why I circled Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Small Backs…
Category: Big Loves
Big Loves: Jeneva Burroughs Stone on Sir Thomas Browne
Let’s face it: No one wakes up one day with the epiphany, “I must read Religio Medici!” Sir Thomas Browne’s works are funky, antiquated gems, somewhat obscure even for those who study 16th and 17th century English Renaissance Literature, as I did at Columbia University from 1987 – 1994. Browne clings like a barnacle to…
Big Loves: Michael Copperman on Willa Cather’s Five Stories
Willa Cather’s Five Stories, is a short, strange, beautiful collection of her short fiction that spans the course of her literary career. The first story in the collection, “The Enchanted Bluff,” is written in first person. It uses retrospection powerfully and overtly; the story concerns a river and a group of boys who grow up…
Big Loves: Chad Parmenter on Lucie Brock-Broido’s The Master Letters
The first time I came across Lucie Brock-Broido’s The Master Letters was in Ed Brunner’s wonderful class, at SIU-Carbondale, on the book-length poetry project. When I opened it up, I noticed that he was thanked personally on the back page, and I probably started to read it based on a “hey, I know that guy”…
Big Loves: Paula Whyman on T.C. Boyle’s “Greasy Lake”
Today’s contributor to our Big Loves column is Paula Whyman. Whyman’s debut collection of linked short stories, You May See a Stranger, is out this month from TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press. In the book, she follows Miranda Weber from her teens through her late 40s as she struggles with sexuality, marriage, politics, and the…
Big Loves: Katie Chase on Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum’s Madeleine Is Sleeping
Today’s contributor to our Big Loves column is Katie Chase. Her debut short story collection, Man and Wife, is out this week from A Strange Object. In these funny and subversive stories, marriages are arranged over tea, blood feuds simmer beneath football games, and cities burn while their characters struggle between holding on to their families and seeking…
Big Loves: Nicky Beer on Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings
Today’s contributor to our Big Loves column is Nicky Beer. Beer is the author of two poetry collections, The Octopus Game (2015) and The Diminishing House (2010), both published by Carnegie Mellon. In The Octopus Game, Beer’s shape-shifting cephalopods visit the reader in films, dreamlike carnivals, and all the mysterious depths of our imaginations. Here,…
Big Loves: Howard Axelrod on Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels
Today’s contributor to our Big Loves column is Howard Axelrod. Axelrod’s memoir The Point of Vanishing was recently published by Beacon Press. The memoir traces Axelrod’s movements, internal and external, and his sense of self and place in the world, after he loses vision in one eye. The book is a luminous reflection on solitude,…
Big Love: Chaitali Sen on Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow
Today’s contributor to our Big Loves column is Chaitali Sen. Sen is the author of the novel, The Pathless Sky, which was published by Europa Editions this month. The novel tells the story of one couple’s quest to sustain their marriage when political violence strikes their unnamed homeland. Kirkus calls her book a “poignant and sophisticated work couched in…
Big Loves: Zach Falcon on William Gaddis’s JR
Today’s contributor to our Big Loves column is Zach Falcon. Falcon’s debut short story collection, Cabin, Clearing, Forest, was recently published by University of Alaska Press. In sharp and lyrical writing, Falcon’s collection explores the interior lives and domestic relations of people shaped by Alaska, in all its isolation, beauty, and brutality. Here, Falcon shares his…
MEMORIOUS: A JOURNAL OF NEW VERSE & FICTION 