In this valuable book, Gabriel Josipovici raises radical doubts about the aesthetic and spiritual satisfactions of conventional storytelling as well as the unquestioned values of realism, at one point condemning writers simply content to tell a story “and telling it in such a way as to make readers feel that they are not reading about […]
Milan-Kundera
Book Feature: Roberto Bolaño and the Half-Hearted Hoax
Does it matter that posthumous literary darling Roberto Bolaño fibbed about his past? by Tommy Wallach My World Books review of “2666” A couple days ago, “The New York Times” published an article suggesting that Chilean novelist and posthumous literary darling Roberto Bolaño may have fictionalized aspects of his own biography. In question are two […]
Norman Manea on The Lasting Poison of Stalinism
Norman Manea wants a nuanced moral reckoning of the sins committed in the Stalinist past. by Bill Marx In a recent World Books podcast I talk to Romanian-born essayist and novelist Norman Manea about his article, “A Lasting Poison,” which was published last month in the “New Republic.” In his commentary, Manea explores the recent […]
Fuse Book Review: The Poetics of Surprise
Since it is the innovators who make up the real history of the novel, Milan Kundera muses on the increasing tenuousness of this tradition of eccentric innovation. He also charts how the new arises from a collision between forgetting and remembering images of the past. The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts. By Milan Kundera. […]