Paradoxes, Postcards and Porn: Vertigo, Hotel & Grow a Pair by Joanna Walsh‘In the scattered and incoherent set of margin notes that constitutes a critic’s initial response to a text, a certain word can appear often enough to force a method of interpretation. The first ‘paradox’ I scribbled on Joanna Walsh’s short story6 Apr. 2016
Dance to the Music of Crime: Perfidia by James EllroyWhile Ellroy works on a big canvas – war, love, unsolved murders – his narratives do not have a long novel’s turning circle. They burn through plot, through false leads and easy answers and obvious betrayals. The first 100 pages of Perfidia are li...19 May. 2015
Small breaths: All That Is & Collected Stories by James SalterAll That Is is both sweeping – a man’s entire adult life is covered, beginning from the age of eighteen and ending in old age, just before serious illness might begin – and minute. Despite the span of time covered in the book, it is under 300 page...17 Feb. 2014
The late unfunny ones: Philip RothDuring my formative years, when I was still a baffled undergraduate, this was a magical name amongst the friends I counted as readers, and even to older acquaintances a generation removed from our contemporary gods but not so dismissive of the not...14 Mar. 2013
