Un(der)known Writers: Helle Busacca
image (via) Helle Busacca was born in Sicily in 1915, raised in Milan and died in Florence in 1996. She taught in various high schools…
Un(der)known Writers: George Oppen
As a member of the Objectivist school, poet George Oppen sought to enact the materiality of language through simple phrasing and shorthand. His career includes…
The Madman's Interpreters
An interview with the translators of Raymond Roussel, the most influential 20th century French writer you’ve never heard of
From Russia With Literature
An interview with editor Natasha Perova on Russian literature after perestroika
Bad Mothers
On the Casey Anthony Trial and Ruby C. Tapia’s "American Pietàs: Visions of Race, Death, and the Maternal."
The History of Dialogue: Naked Online
A conversation between contributing editor Helena Fitzgerald and managing editor Malcolm Harris on the pictures and practices of internet nudity.
The Art of Faking It: Bourgeois Socialism
It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois—for the benefit of the working class.
Un(der)known Writers: Harry Crews
The answer’s never easy. You can’t just go back and say, ‘Well, his mama got on him when he was a little boy, and he never got over it.’ Welll, maybe that’s true, but that won’t take you very far.
The Art of Faking It: David Foster Wallace
Sweetie, my relationship record indicates a guy who’s bad news. And more and more now lately I’ve been afraid that you’re going to get hurt, that I might hurt you the way I seem to have hurt others who—”
The History of Dialogue: Other People’s Papers
A dialogue between Teach, an adjunct philosophy instructor at a public university in New York, and Cheat, who has authored over 100 papers for pay.
The Art of Cuisine: Fragrant Vapors of Goulash
In her absence, her father, a meager pensioner with a passion for heraldry, blazonry, archivology, and sigillography, absconds with his wife for the King of Hungary, a local restaurant, to determine whether what their daughter, a champion of simple, economical home-cooked meals, says of eating places was in fact true: that they serve nothing but
The Art of Cuisine: "Such Lawless Cake"
Photo: The Moonshiner's Daughter, N. Brock, 1900 "I was usually left with her while both families went to church on Sabbath mornings and well remember being…
Un(der)known Writers: Alberto Savinio
Via Literalab Operatic Lives: “Isadora Duncan” (1942) In Nice it was raining. Apollo and Diana stood at the curb, covered by black raincoats. When the automobile…
Fringe Feminists: Patti Smith
Photo: Patti Smith: Horses by Lester Bangs Creem Magazine, February 1976: Patti’s heroes may be gone, but she is both with us and for us, so…
History Repeating: The Weblog
Pamphlets are as modish ornaments to gentlewomen’s toilets as to gentlemen’s pockets; they carry reputation of wit and learning to all that make them their companions; the poor find their account in stall-keeping and in hawking them; the rich find in them their shortest way to the secrets of church and state.