The beauty of How to Write a Novel is two-fold. First, all of its readers will walk away having learned something about writing, even if they don’t mean to. Second, its readers will walk away wanting to write and revise something, which is the mark of a good teacher, good workshop, good craft book. Editor Aaron Burch and his friends challenge readers to consider their own hobbies and how the principles behind them relate to writing. After closing the book, I wondered, what does writing have in common with volleyball? Or Pokémon? Or singing? Or video editing? I knew I had to write in order to find out.
Author:
A review of Sodomy’s Solicitations by Joseph J. Fischel
The book is erudite, playful at times, and well-argued. But whether these two relatively straight-forward propositions require so much theorizing and intricate prose is debatable, at least outside the groves of academe, where the author writes from a perch at Yale. One can imagine functionaries in the current White House looking at this book and immediately barking out orders to cut federal funding for New Haven.
A review of Ingenious: A Biography of Benjamin Franklin, Scientist by Richard Munson
Throughout this biography, Munson makes clear that Franklin’s scientific engagement with the world is a perpetual touchstone. No matter where he is on the planet—striving in his early life in the states, representing the states in England, working as a wartime ambassador in France, or traversing the ocean in between—Franklin is continuously scientifically inquisitive, continuously meeting and corresponding with other investigators, continuously inventing, and continuously devising and refining experiments.
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A review of Fit Into Me by Molly Gaudry
So many of Gaudry’s sentences, from the very first – “Because most nights during the final semester of my MFA at George Mason University, while recovering from a mild traumatic brain injury, I fell asleep watching Prison Break on my laptop in bed.” – to the penultimate sentence – “Because words, imagined in the greatest yearning, as a means of finding love, defining it; as a means of shaping it (This is how it feels, this is where it hurts) and sharing with others its permutations, astonishments, exaltations, and erosions.” – seem to offer an explanation for some unstated condition.
A review of The Victoria Principle by Michael Farrell
By keeping close to home, the pieces in this collection challenge notions of what is and isn’t real, undermining notions of memoir, which is a construct no matter how it’s labelled. It makes for consistently entertaining, and often challenging reading that encourages uncertainty. This shift between memoir, fiction and poetry feels seamless, challenging the reader to re-examine notions of identity, history art.
A review of Final Curtain edited by Steve Berman
Final Curtain is a well curated collection featuring a pleasant variety of stories and interesting perspectives and interpretations of the characters and themes of The Phantom of the Opera. The period pieces are heavy and languid, broken up effectively by modern retellings, more experimental works, and the doings of cats. Choosing classical in style pieces at the fore and aft of the anthology was a masterful choice; one prepares you for what follows, the latter closes the loop; the audience at the theater retreat satisfied.
A review of Earthly by Jean Follain
Follain’s impersonal perspective puts him, in Francis Ponge’s phrase, on the side of objects. The natural features and man-made things that fill his poems are given presences of their own, which Follain brings out with a sharp eye and an understanding of their place within the human world.
A review of Where do you live? by Hanaa Ahmad Jabr and Jennifer Jean
The job of creative individuals, then, is to bear witness to the horrors inflicted by those who would destroy “our distant spark of light.” We must resist and carry our light into the future. Our task, says Where do you live?, is to be constantly raw , constantly attuned to these insults. We must feel them, record them, and keep going.
A review of The Dingo’s Noctuary by Judith Nangala Crispin
The idea that we are all en route to returning to outer space is a healing and consoling thought, bringing together the many themes in the book in a way that is both beautiful and heartbreaking. At $130,The Dingo’s Noctuary is not a cheap book, but it is a work of art, and one that continues to call the reader back to find new threads, new stories, and new transformations.