On Giorgio Bassani’s Novel of Ferrara

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Could there be a more alarming role model for a writer than Scheherazade? You tell a story and, worst case, your head is cut off. Best case: the would-be decapitator…

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Pawe? Pawlikowski’s search for roots

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On an anthology of Oulipo

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At dinner in San Francisco’s Tenderloin in 1976, the writer Armistead Maupin urged Rock Hudson, the twentieth century’s most famously closeted heartthrob, to come out by writing a book. Hudson’s…

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Orson Welles sets the record straight

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Mary Robison’s fiction of the superfluous

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Discussed in this essay: Vile Days, by Gary Indiana, edited by Bruce Hainley. Semiotext(e). 600 pages. $29.95. Seasonal Associate, by Heike Geissler, translated by Katy Derbyshire. Semiotext(e). 240 pages. $16.95. The Children’s Bach,…

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The life of Anthony Powell

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Can the Qur’an be read as literature?

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Knausgaard’s struggle comes to an end

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A poignant, profane novel of addiction

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Discussed in this essay: Of Love & War, by Lynsey Addario. Penguin Press. 272 pages. $40. Heavy, by Kiese Laymon. Scribner. 256 pages. $26. The Letters of Sylvia Plath. Harper. 1088 pages. $45.…

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Discussed in this essay:  Algiers, Third World Capital: Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries, Black Panthers by Elaine Mokhtefi. Verso. 256 pages. $24.95.  He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith…

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Deborah Eisenberg’s radically alien fiction

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The elusive meaning of privacy in America

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Discussed in this essay:  Notes from the Fog by Ben Marcus. Knopf. 288 pages. $26.95. A Girl’s Guide to Missiles: Growing up in America’s Secret Desert by Karen Piper. 336 pages. Viking. $27.…

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Nick Drnaso’s hypnotically grim graphic novels

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Why the criminal justice system is ill-equipped to prosecute rape charges

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Sleep gets a bad rap in the United States. Despite the threats and cajolings of the CDC, which has deemed chronic sleeplessness a serious danger to the nation’s health, and…

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James Wood’s return to fiction

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Deborah Levy’s foremothers and heiresses

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The strangest part of acquiring my green card was the medical exam, which culminated in an inspection of my breasts and “external genitalia.” Underwear lowered to my knees, I stood…

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The uses and abuses of psychedelics

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Rachel Cusk’s unforgiving eye

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It’s hard for bookish people not to romanticize the act of reading—as a spur to imagination and compassion for others or just an escape from whatever real-life trap you may…

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Helen DeWitt’s uncompromising fictions

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The bowdlerization of Jean Rhys

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