Archive
Open Letters Monthly Archive Feature: Second Glance
With its headspinning wordplay and lunatic cast of characters, Seth Morgan's 1990 novel Homeboy blazed like a comet into the literary pantheon. Steve Danziger revisits this grime crime classic.
Read MoreAnne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is usually overshadowed by her sisters' masterpieces, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, but this gripping novel, a startling exposé of Victorian patriarchy, deserves a turn in the spotlight.
Read MoreA rich, beautiful, but sadly neglected historical masterpiece: Hilda Prescott's The Man on a Donkey is the War and Peace of the English Reformation
Read MoreHer merciless social scrutiny and crystal-perfect prose put Barbara Pym in the same league as Jane Austen -- and yet she languishes on the edge of obscurity. We offer a re-appraisal -- and a celebration.
Read MoreOnce considered a credible rival to Dickens and Thackeray, W. H. Ainsworth is nearly forgotten today. It's our loss: his historical novels - full of sensuous detail - run the gamut of romance and horror, tragedy and comedy.
Read MorePauline Kael is out of print today and perhaps known best for the enemies she made. But any immersion into her passionate, intelligent writing shows her to have been one of the best movie critics--or critic of any kind--of the past century.
Read MoreIt's one of the iconic bestsellers of the 20th century, an epic of love and war -- but how well does "Gone With The Wind" hold up, as a book? A personal journey through a problematic classic.
Read MoreIn books such as "Live Alone and Like It" Marjorie Hillis preached independence and practical style to "live-aloner" working women of the 1930s and beyond
Read MoreThackeray's seminal big baggy monster of a novel is a satiric romp across all levels of English society - and every bit as enjoyable now as it was when it was the talk of London in 1847
Read MoreDonald Windham may not have intended his 1965 novel Two People to be trailblazing, but its unsentimental frankness set it apart just the same. Philip Gambone reads it again.
Read MoreAs Ingrid Norton reports, the eerie and heartbroken poems of W.S. Merwin's The Lice continue to resonate thirty years on: whispering, creeping, shaking.
Read MoreReaders are familiar with the uncompromising dissections of Apartheid South Africa in J.M. Coetzee’s Booker winners Disgrace and Life and Times of Michael K, but Greg Gerke wants us to be equally aware of the haunting vision of Coetzee’s 1990 novel Age of Iron
Read MoreHe wrote over 40 novels, many of which are classics, and that sheer quantity can be daunting. Rohan Maitzen tells us how best to approach the literary dynamo that was Anthony Trollope.
Read MoreShe was a bestseller in her day, now virtually unknown. Fanny Burney, and her great novel Evelina, gets some long-deserved attention from Tracey Kelly.
Read MoreYou may have passed over Frederick Busch’s many novels on bookstore shelves; Brad Jones convinces you to stop and read the words.
Read MoreExiled Russian writer Nina Berberova (who fled to America when the Nazis invaded her adopted homeland of France) spent her entire career examining the experience of displacement. In this regular feature, Karen Vanuska revisits Berberova’s life and literary achievements and finds them startlingly relevant to our own fractured times.
Read MoreIn his lifetime, E.B. White oversaw nearly a dozen collections of his essays; Karen Vanuska appraises a posthumous ingathering edited by Rebecca M. Dale and lets us know whether it adds to White’s legacy or merely overlaps it
Read MoreSince its publication in 2000, The Last Samurai has been defined, but not explained, as a “cult classic.” In this regular feature, Garth Risk Hallberg looks with fresh eyes at Helen DeWitt’s brilliant and jolting novel.
Read MoreIn this regular feature, Adam Golaski revisits Intelligent Dance (or “laptop”) Music, discovering unity and poise in a Squarepusher album which critics have short-sightedly misfiled.
Read MoreJoanna Scutts inaugurates this regular feature by revisiting the groundbreaking mysteries of Dorothy Sayers, who’s ability to wryly delight remains undimmed.
Read More
Powered by Squarespace.