31 Days of Stories 2023, Day 16: “Wedding Day” by Gwendolyn Bennett
Bennett's story, though relatively brief, is a subtle excavation of racial, class, and gendered power dynamics.
31 Days of Stories 2023, Day 13: “Title” by John Barth and “Elements of the Short Story” by Stuart Ross
Barth, like Ross, writes in a highly ironic mode.
31 Days of Stories 2023, Day 9: “Striding Folly” by Dorothy L. Sayers
If "Striding Folly" does not represent Sayers at the height of her powers, it is nevertheless an intriguing oddity.
31 Days of Stories 2023, Day 7: “The Robot and the Baby” by John McCarthy
The story may not work as fiction, but it does illuminate some of the philosophical and ontological dilemmas swirling around the notion of sentient robots.
31 Days of Stories 2023, Day 5: “The Earring” by Jo Nesbø; Robert Ferguson, trans.
The author's trick in "The Earring" is to convince his reader to sympathize with sad-sack Amund.
31 Days of Stories 2023, Day 2: “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates
The story has numerous commonalities with Everil Worrell's pulp horror tale "Leonora."
31 Days of Stories 2023, Day 1: “Leonora” by Everil Worrell
Worrell foregrounds the degree to which male members of the medical establishment dismiss or ignore women's complaints.
Together, Donald Trump and Vince McMahon represent postmodern avatars for our relativistic, media saturated age
The pith and substance of both books involves an interrogation of what is genuine and what is kayfabe.
American author and poverty abolitionist Matthew Desmond turns the spotlight on readers in his latest volume
The alternatives to the limited cost of his proposals should be morally repugnant to the vast majority of thinking and feeling people.
A new biography of Mickey Spillane makes the case for the late pulp novelist’s ongoing importance
Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction provides a thoughtful overview of the man and his work.