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Category Archives: book review

On Reality & Its Discontents

Quite possibly the most brazenly insubordinate and thought-provoking book I have read since Walter Benjamin‘s landmark essay “The Work of Art In the Age Of Mechanical Reproduction” is David Shields’s highly hyped “manifesto,” Reality Hunger. (Inverted sentence structure intended, BTW.) I don’t know if I am yet prepared to follow Shields into the novels-are-not-really-novels wilderness, [...]

Most Influential Novels of the Decade

Not the “best,” necessarily, but these are the novels, I think, which will cast the longest shadows to the writers of the future. 2000 Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius 2001 Tie: Ian McEwan, Atonement; Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections 2002 Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex 2003 James Frey, A Million Little Pieces (now that we [...]

Review of Denis Johnson’s novel, TREE OF SMOKE

A review of Denis Johnson‘s new, 25-years-in-the-writing novel, Tree of Smoke, is in the October 2007 edition of The Believer.

Review of Matt Sharpe’s novel, JAMESTOWN

A review of Matt Sharpe‘s new novel, JAMESTOWN, was published in the August 2007 edition of The Believer.

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