Book readers—and we must presume that there are at least a few of us left!— cannot help but be aware that screen-worthiness is part of the appeal. But the fact that it reads so well as a book means that it is also proudly declares itself as a novel first and last, which ironically solidifies one of its great pleasures. It lives through words on its pages, and this book comes alive in ways familiar to the sensations you get when your exercised heart pounds in your chest.
Read MoreTHE INFLUENCING MACHINE
Most of the time we don’t seek out fresh voices because fresh voices take work to take in. Even old fresh voices: most people these days aren’t going to stream an great chestnut from the French New Wave. More to the point, we are all inundated by information and increasingly complicated lives. Be honest: ordinary things are endlessly complex and often exhausting in the modern world.The inertia to shed previous skins and try something new holds the vast majority of us locked in habituated place. There’s a reason so much of the country eats at McDonalds as frequently as they do.
Read MoreFICTIONS REGARDED AS TRUTHS
Fiction offers more than just food for thought. It offers possibilities. Social media, conversely, offers us shallow moments of vicarious sensation. As something usually less than reportage, and certainly something substantially less than earnest invention, social media generally traffics in distraction where fiction, even in its most banal expressions, asks something more.
Read MoreREADING COLSON WHITEHEAD IN ALABAMA
The province of writers should remain practically sacrosanct in terms of legal and cultural protections when speaking directly to readers.
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