Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas, Edited by Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedeker. University of California Press, 2013. $29.95, 176 pages.
Room 220 will host the New Orleans launch of Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas at a Happy …
Book Review
Our Education
Our Education, by Lincoln Michel. Electric Literature, 2012. $.99, 17 pages.
As microcosm of our society, Our Education by Lincoln Michel succeeds in drawing parallels between society and a school in which all the teachers have vanished. The narrator is …
Should Our Undoing Come Down Upon Us White
Should Our Undoing Come Down Upon Us White, by Jill Osier. Bull City Press, 2013. $12, 36 pages.
Robert Frost begins “Fire and Ice” by offering a choice between the two elements: one or the other, he says, fire …
The Testing of Luther Albright
The Testing of Luther Albright, by MacKenzie Bezos. Harper, 2005. $14.99, 256 pages.
Some readers maintain that plots conform to several basic skeletons, with minor variations in between. Regardless of whether this is true, of the models currently on …
The New Jim Crow
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander. The New Press, 2010. $19.95, 336 pages.
{Michelle Alexander will present her work at an event beginning at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 2, in …
The People in the Trees
The People in the Trees, by Hanya Yanagihara. Doubleday, 2013, $26.95, 384 pages.
Per its publicity, Hanya Yanagihara’s debut novel The People in the Trees is a “tragic vision of what happens when cultures collide.” These words, for all …
A Questionable Shape
A Questionable Shape, by Bennett Sims. Two Dollar Radio, 2013. $16.50, 218 pages.
I don’t like zombies. It’s not that I’m afraid of them, I just think that their current popularity points to unsettling cultural fixations—which would be fine …
Água Viva
Água Viva, by Clarice Lispector (translated by Stefan Tobler). New Directions, 2012. $14.95. 88 pages.
Without time, without names, without actions, Clarice Lispector’s novel Água Viva recalls the style of her other novels—a woman’s interior monologue. Here she is …
Po-boy Contraband: From Diagnosis Back to Life
Po-boy Contraband: From Diagnosis Back to Life, by Patrice Melnick. Catalyst Book Press, 2012. $16, 150 pages.
Two points strike me as I read Patrice Melnick’s frank memoir, Po-boy Contraband, about her contraction of HIV when she was …
Farther Away
Farther Away, by Jonathan Franzen. FSG, 2012. $26.00, 336 pages.
The idea that Jonathan Franzen is a man who might have fit in better half a century ago is tossed around quite often, and for good reason: he writes …
