Jeffrey Barbieri on Wendy Chen’s Unearthings. As an essayist, I am familiar with writing that engages in personal disclosure. Too often, nonfiction work resembles something more like a therapy session—the writer has disclosed raw, personal details without making any self-reflexive attempt to interrogate or connect their story to their identity, or whatever their larger commentary …
Naomi Washer on Magalie Guérin’s NOTES ON NOTES ON is an a-chronological studio diary that artist Magalie Guérin re-transcribed twice by hand and now in print. Through that active facsimile Guérin documents her painting process, mapping at once her creative history and the way that history consistently transforms. Personal, professional, and creative spheres intersect like …
Josh Cook on Jesse Ball’s The Curfew When we read, we read with our memories. Jesse Ball was already an important author in my reading life by the time I read The Curfew, but whereas his earlier books explore more amorphous ideas like our relationship to imagination, the nature of storytelling, and the bounds of …
Renée Branum on Elif Batuman’s The Idiot On my 30th birthday, while visiting my friend Sara in New Orleans, the city flooded. I don’t even remember what our destination was—only that we couldn’t reach it because the street was full of water. This trembling lake that only the bravest cars could move through: high-riding Land … Continue reading
Shelby Shaw on Lily Hoang’s A Bestiary “How many versions of this essay will I save? Command Shift S.” The eternal risk of losing yourself begins when you throw your value into the ranks of another’s hierarchical desires: Here I am, what do you think of me? We are all in this changing room together … Continue reading
Sara Hendery on Riad Sattouf’s The Arab of the Future It starts, for me, with an image of a bull. Burly and dark, hard, like forehead lines, proud and steaming—to some, a symbol of fear, to others, a symbol of home. Riad Sattouf’s graphic memoir The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, … Continue reading
Morgan Childs on Miranda July’s The First Bad Man More recently than I’m inclined to admit on the Internet, my father said something to me—female, twentysomething, heterosexual, and very newly single—that felt like salt in a wound. “You call yourself a feminist, but when it comes to romance, you’re like a limp rag,” he told … Continue reading
Sam Dolph on Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts Maggie Nelson’s memoir, The Argonauts, is about undoing. Structurally, she undoes everything we are taught about how a piece of literature is supposed to exist and work: she does not give us chapters, indentations at the start of paragraphs, or any kind of chronological order. She undoes the … Continue reading
Natalia Holtzman on Richard Makin’s Mourning It’s now something of a convention for a writer to complain about the inadequacy of language. How difficult it is to apprehend the world by way of sentences. I can’t help thinking that it isn’t language that is inadequate, but our use of it, our insubstantial grasp. We seem … Continue reading
Courtney Bulsiewicz on Angela Pelster’s Limber I saw a mallard in a small stream the other day; he thrust his head under the creek and threw the water down the back of his feathers, shaking his beak and making his neck a loose green rag. I stopped in the middle of the stairs I was … Continue reading
To the editors of con•text, While sitting here in rural Ireland, looking out of the window to the yard and the muddy lane beyond, I thought of your publication, and wondered why there hasn’t yet been some review of László Krasznahorkai’s Satantango, since it just won the Man Booker International prize, and may attract some … Continue reading
Kristin M. Distel on Debra Allbery’s Walking Distance In 1991, the University of Pittsburgh Press published Debra Allbery’s first collection of poetry, Walking Distance, as the winner of the 1990 Agnes Lynch Starrett poetry prize. Allbery’s youth, spent in northwestern Ohio, informs the majority of the collection and serves as a compelling backdrop to her … Continue reading
Emily Wilson on Bhanu Kapil’s Ban en Banlieue. There is a straight stretch of ribbon before you. There is a clump of charcoal. The ribbon is red; the charcoal—well, what is the color between black and gray without waxing too poetic about it? Is the ribbon tongue or tail? Is the charcoal dirt or purifier? … Continue reading
con•text 