Category Archives: literary magazaines
Black Philip Roth
March 28, 2014 Not biologically black, of course (though what an “African-American biology” might mean is not entirely clear either). Still, Philip Roth might be said to be partly black — through mediation, association, and, perhaps most of all, contention — … Continue reading
A Scot and the New Yorker
December 4, 2014 A bad cold, and the last week of class — so this is how I’d be remembered by everyone: hoarse, stuffed up, inarticulate, incapable of complex thought. On a whim, I decided to see if there’s a … Continue reading
Toni Morrison, Slade Morrison: More Children’s Books
September 12, 2012 Toni Morrison also had trouble with publishers. At least she managed to get it in print — The Big Box, the first of several coauthored with her son Slade, first appeared in Ms. Magazine in 1980 and, … Continue reading
Children’s Books, Children’s Songs: Gertrude Stein, Paul Robeson
September 5, 2012 Last year Yale University Press brought out Gertrude Stein’s To Do: A Book for Alphabets and Birthdays, never published in her lifetime. Stein had written it as a follow-up to her first children’s book, The World is … Continue reading
All Saints Bookstore, Beijing
June 13, 2012 We were in Hong Kong on June 4, the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. A candlelight vigil had been held in Victoria Park for the past 23 years. This year, 180,000 people showed up. There … Continue reading
Updating the Nineteenth Century
November 30, 2011 Michael Gilmore, my old colleague at Brandeis, used to teach a lecture course on nineteenth-century American literature, with 100 students every year. I used to teach one with 50 students. That seemed a very long time ago. … Continue reading