Essay

“Spanish in America: Notes on Feeling Culturally Multiple,” by Frank M. Meola

Leave a Comment /

Such images, alien to our suburban lives, along with her shifts into mixed Spanish and English, revealed how much my grandmother still lived in that other place. She denied wanting ever to return to Spain but followed news from her native country with keen interest, eager for the demise of the Franco dictatorship, an event she lived long enough to celebrate.

“Spanish in America: Notes on Feeling Culturally Multiple,” by Frank M. Meola Read More »

“On Amelia Earhart: The Aviatrix as American Dandy,” by Anne Herrmann

Leave a Comment /

A flâneuse of the air, she will never be confused with a streetwalker; a solo flier, she cannot be suspected of sexual desire. Neither tomboy nor butch, neither masculinized nor sexualized, the “queer” property of “A.E.” is one that nobody owns even as it continues to generate instant recognition.

“On Amelia Earhart: The Aviatrix as American Dandy,” by Anne Herrmann Read More »

“Primal Postcards: ‘Madeline’ as a Secret Space of Ludwig Bemelmans’s Childhood,” by Mary Galbraith

Leave a Comment /

One or more pictures stand out as the book’s primal raison d’etre; that is, there is at least one picture which activates a “flashbulb memory” from the creator’s childhood and which the story explains in an ambiguous way. The manifest storybook explanation for this primal scene is benign and reassuring while the latent and historical interpretation is traumatic and unbearable.

“Primal Postcards: ‘Madeline’ as a Secret Space of Ludwig Bemelmans’s Childhood,” by Mary Galbraith Read More »

“Migrants at the Door,” by David McDannald

Leave a Comment /

In four decades of family history on the ranch no immigrant had ever made contact. The effort to capture them, though, is omnipresent in the post-9/11 militarization of the borderlands. The number of vehicles on constant patrol in the Big Bend Sector has more than tripled. Helicopters circle, sometimes for entire days, scanning the hills, bearing down on migrants, driving them to the point of collapse.

“Migrants at the Door,” by David McDannald Read More »

“A Meeting in Antibes,” by Karen M. Radell

Leave a Comment /

There was one last buzz, then Greene pulled himself reluctantly up off the sofa. As I watched him cross the living room, the part of my mind still working in slow motion pictured the door opening, the gunmen entering and shooting Greene (professionals, with silencers), then noticing me and shooting me too, with some surprise but with no regret. I thought of the headlines the next day: STRANGE WOMAN MURDERED WITH FAMOUS AUTHOR IN RIVIERA APARTMENT.

“A Meeting in Antibes,” by Karen M. Radell Read More »

“Serious Noticing,” by James Wood

Leave a Comment /

Emerson once said that society was a mob, conspiring against the sovereign strength of the self. Now we are an electronic mob, and the forces of distraction are powerfully arrayed against us. It has always been the case that society never wanted a writer to write a book, something you will discover when you leave this place and try to create the space and time to write. Society doesn’t want your book of stories or poems, and you will have to push against society, as if you had your shoulder to the door of a crowded room; you will have to shove your book into existence, birth it violently.

“Serious Noticing,” by James Wood Read More »

“Hemingway’s Humor,” by Jeffrey Meyers

Leave a Comment /

Hemingway’s fame rests on his tragic romances of love and death; his evocative stories crafted in spare prose; his vivid war reporting and travel books. He was not a comic writer, and when he tried to be funny he could be heavy-handed, as in his parody The Torrents of Spring, or embarrassingly arch, as in the tedious conversations with the Old Lady in the otherwise fascinating Death in the Afternoon. Yet his most underrated quality was his lively sense of humor.

“Hemingway’s Humor,” by Jeffrey Meyers Read More »