A Blog About Books and Reading
A Blog About Books and Reading
"If you are afraid of the ascendancy of fascism in this country – and you would be very foolish not to be right now – then you had better understand that the root issue here has to do with male supremacy and the control of women."
The ninety-four-year-old author’s story, about art and failure, is charged with typically graceful and metaphorical language.
Stories require attention and concentration and often yield their meanings only over time, or in retrospect. But the best stories reward vigilance and repeated reading.
In a brief survey of some core Western texts, Oates asks the key question, why do we want to experience fear in an aesthetic context?
Thom Jones’s most famous story is about one U.S. Marine before, during, and after deployment to Vietnam.
Short stories offer a different kind of pleasure from other forms of literature, a pleasure not curtailed by a story's relatively small size.