The Purpose of Art: An Interview with Elise Blackwell
by Alan Heathcock
“I’m fatigued by the idea that there is police tape around content”: Elise Blackwell talks with Alan Heathcock about genre, New Orleans, and her new novel, The Lower Quarter.
“I’m fatigued by the idea that there is police tape around content”: Elise Blackwell talks with Alan Heathcock about genre, New Orleans, and her new novel, The Lower Quarter.
Part I of James Pinto’s conversation with Tom Bissell on video games, questions of genre, and a writer’s confidence.
Poetry—it isn’t just for poets! In her latest column, Katie Umans recommends straying from fiction with the following books: Kingdom Animalia, Something in the Potato Room, Le Spleen de Poughkeepsie, and Lucky Fish.
Pam Houston’s Contents May Have Shifted is made up of journal entries that recount the main character Pam’s travels, troubles, and search for meaning. In Michael Byers’s review, he wishes the novel were braver, and argues that the literary novel must take itself seriously, while considering why we hold genre fiction to a different standard.
We celebrate Valentine’s Day with an homage to the living dead: Colson Whitehead’s Zone One. Don’t fancy a date with scary slavering? No matter. Michael Rudin finds the novel reads like an existential valentine to New York City, and that’s something even a zombie can love.
Jesús Ángel García’s debut “transmedia” novel, badbadbad is fast, fun, irreverent, and unlike anything else in the fiction aisle. Starring a lead character who shares the author’s name, the book follows his descent from devout webmaster to the obsessed savior of a pornographic social network. Also included: a documentary, a soundtrack, a chapter-by-chapter YouTube playlist.
Little jaunt to the underworld? Don’t forget your passport. The second installment in Lev Grossman’s Fillory series, The Magician King, continues to play with realist fantasy and the right amount of irony to meld the two. Quentin and his pals provide a sly and subversive fairy tale for grown-ups, with a caution: be careful what you wish for. You might get it.
Ever feel like reading genre without, you know, knowing what to expect? Cam Terwilliger on why Percival Everett’s Assumption—one volume, three mystery novellas—will kick your [ahem] assumptions to the curb.
Caroline Preston’s fourth novel, The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, recreates the rush of standing in a dusty corner of a used bookstore, flipping through a shoebox of old photos, and finding something that seems to tell a secret story.
Stories We Love: “White Angel,” by Michael Cunningham
Stories We Love: Donald Barthelme’s “The School,” In Which is Revealed the Meaning of Life
Stories We Love: "A Small, Good Thing" by Raymond Carver
Stories We Love: "The Fall River Axe Murders," by Angela Carter
Stories We Love: "Incarnations of Burned Children"
