Tag: criticism

Criticism

They Don’t Build Statues of Critics…Just Mansplainers: On White Men Feeling the Need to Chime in About Statues of Literary Critics When a Girl Just Wants to Have Fun

Charli XCX is finally having a moment. Or, at least, a moment that’s more in the mainstream than ever before. This being a result of her push to become a Right Proper Pop Star by fully utilizing all the major resources of her juggernaut label, Atlantic, to promote her last album of the contract, Crash (an erudite J. G. Ballard reference, in case you didn’t … Continue reading They Don’t Build Statues of Critics…Just Mansplainers: On White Men Feeling the Need to Chime in About Statues of Literary Critics When a Girl Just Wants to Have Fun

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Criticism

It’s Not the Internet, It’s You: Fake Accounts

Being meta is pretty much essential to the twenty-first century “novel.” So is exhibiting signs of “immediate retromania.” In the case of Fake Accounts (a non-risqué double entendre of a title), that means taking us “all the way back” to the Women’s March that transpired on Donald Trump’s inauguration day in 2017. As Lauren Oyler’s debut, Fake Accounts firmly establishes her place in the usual insular “New York … Continue reading It’s Not the Internet, It’s You: Fake Accounts

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Criticism

The Library and Literature of Gunpowder Milkshake

There are few movies that make libraries “sexy” (or even use libraries at all for that matter). Certainly not The Pagemaster. Maybe Funny Face. But with Navot Papushado’s latest film, Gunpowder Milkshake, the cachet of the library might just get a brief defibrillation (because Ghostbusters and The Day After Tomorrow certainly did not make the library look inviting, nor did Sex and the City: The Movie with Carrie and her dramatic “left at the … Continue reading The Library and Literature of Gunpowder Milkshake

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Criticism

The Basement Poetry Reading Comes To the Capitol (And No, That’s Not A Compliment)

It is said that you cannot judge someone “so young” with the same yardstick of measurement that you would someone more mature, more established in their field. With 22-year-old Amanda Gorman’s poetry reading at Joe Biden’s inauguration, however, that becomes something of a tall order. Her delivery of the roughly six-minute long “The Hill We Climb” felt, by and large, rough-hewn, as though we were … Continue reading The Basement Poetry Reading Comes To the Capitol (And No, That’s Not A Compliment)

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Criticism

“At Least I Had Fun, I Suppose”: Kevin Crowe’s No Home In This World by Ewa Mazierska

Fly on the Wall Press, publisher of the collection No Home in This World by Kevin Crowe, presents itself as a “publisher with a conscience.” This description also suits its author, introduced as a “lifelong socialist, [who] has over the years been involved in campaigning on a wide range of issues, including homelessness, anti-war initiatives, trade union rights, freedom of speech, HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ+ rights.” … Continue reading “At Least I Had Fun, I Suppose”: Kevin Crowe’s No Home In This World by Ewa Mazierska

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Criticism

The Italian Prostitute Can’t Be Bought (By An American): The Girl on the Via Flaminia

For those who seem to have forgotten that anti-American sentiment didn’t merely arise when Donald Trump assumed the presidency, let us turn back time to the thick of the nationality’s sudden involvement in World War II, once the Japanese tapped the sleeping giant that was the U.S. on the shoulder with a friendly little bomb on Pearl Harbor. It was then, already two years into … Continue reading The Italian Prostitute Can’t Be Bought (By An American): The Girl on the Via Flaminia

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Criticism

The Sadness of Past Romance As Delineated by the Depiction of Age in Less

While, of course, there is a bittersweetness to all novels centered on aging, perhaps no other in recent memory gets it so right regarding both the cruel and just nature of time. That novel in question being Andrew Sean Greer’s Less, which miraculously won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2018 in the face of it being a “humorous” work. And, as we all know, … Continue reading The Sadness of Past Romance As Delineated by the Depiction of Age in Less

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Criticism

Riddle Me This: What’s the Meaning of a Kiss? by Marissa Glover

It’s no coincidence that we use our mouth, our lips and tongue, to kiss—the same body parts used in conversation, which is the human’s primary method of communication. The kiss offers a secondary mode of communication, and the messages we can send via a kiss are as vast and varied as the types of kisses that exist. This communicative nature gives the kiss its power, … Continue reading Riddle Me This: What’s the Meaning of a Kiss? by Marissa Glover

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Criticism

“I’m Not Just Doing It For the Likes”: Does Writing Mean Anything If No One Sees It?

I once had an “s/o” who used to criticize me for, among other things, constantly feeling the need to publish my work (belittled to that still demeaning term, “blogging”) ad nauseum on all social media outlets. He would taunt and lord his superiority over me, remarking of his own writing, “I’m not just doing it for the likes,” as though to emphasize precisely how frivolous … Continue reading “I’m Not Just Doing It For the Likes”: Does Writing Mean Anything If No One Sees It?

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Criticism

On the Usual Problems of a Celebrity Like Sean Penn Writing a Book–One That’s Actually Prose

“It seems wrong to say that so dystopian a novel is great fun to read, but it’s true. I suspect that Thomas Pynchon and Hunter S. Thompson would love this book.” High praise indeed from Salman Rushdie. But is it truly the writing of Sean Penn or Sean Penn himself that has attracted this level of favor for a debut novel?–one that, at the very … Continue reading On the Usual Problems of a Celebrity Like Sean Penn Writing a Book–One That’s Actually Prose

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