Tag
Fiction
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Extreme Circumstances, Extreme Reactions: Aaron Gwyn and Sean McCann
“I come to the understanding I know nothing, and then I completely throw myself into the research.”
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On Our Nightstands: January 2022
A behind-the-scenes look at what Public Books editors and staff have been reading this month.
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“Having to Explain Who You Are”: Caryl Phillips on Baldwin, Fiction, & Sports
“The first thing he said is, ‘Don’t call me Mr. Baldwin. My name is Jimmy.’ I thought, this is ridiculous, at the very least he’s James.”
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When the Vibe Is Off
Which matters more, intent or interpretation? What if a juxtaposition of images in literature or art is just that—a chance encounter?
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B-Sides: Janet Frame’s “Living in the Maniototo”
Few novels are so crammed with invention. Yet the interlocking richness of her ideas does not derail your reading.
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The “I” in Murakami
Discussing Murakami within the Japanese literary tradition is in itself rare. He is, by his own admission, less well-loved in Japan than abroad.
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The Netanya-who?s: Gossip and Other Kinds of History
Benzion Netanyahu—father of the former prime minister—is not the protagonist; rather, it is his scholarship and the practice of history itself.[none-for-homepage]
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How War—and Racism—Makes Monsters out of Men
In both World Wars, France used West African “colonial conscripts.” Deployed on the front lines, they were often the first to be killed.[none-for-homepage]
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Criminalized Borders and US Health-Care Profits
The pandemic took the health inequalities generated by US imperialism, and made them worse.
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Public Picks 2021
Each May we send our readers into summer with a curated list of the titles that dazzled, challenged, and inspired us most over the past year (or so).
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The Perspective Is the Story
Jenny Erpenbeck’s fiction is an attempt to grasp the underlying precariousness of our sense of identity and belonging.
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Ethnographic Fictions: Talking with Megha Majumdar
Anthropology’s attention to the granular texture of someone’s life is a beautiful training for being a fiction writer.[none-for-homepage]
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Reading Resources: The Novel
A resource for reading about, teaching, and discussing the novel as an artistic and cultural form.
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Beverly Cleary Forever (1916–2021)
Working as a children’s librarian in a “one-library town,” Cleary, age 23, found bored boys asking, “Where are the books about kids like us?”
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Writers: Know Thyself in Excess
Why read MFA-trained writers writing about writers training in MFA programs?
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Episode 5: Novels & Medicine
How can reading novels affect the way doctors and patients communicate?
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B-Sides: Gary Indiana’s “Horse Crazy”
For Indiana, disaster is both imminent and ambient, both apocalyptic and manifested in everyday ordinariness.
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Empathy beyond Therapy
Sigrid Nunez’s fiction inspires the question: What would it mean to make caring for others into an explicitly public priority?
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Episode 4: Novels & Catastrophe
How do novels help us see the present in a broader historical perspective?
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Episode 3: Novels & Intimacy
How can novels expand our understanding of sex and intimacy in the digital age?
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Storytelling Is Big Business
When creating and selling culture, you’re also selling a story about that culture—for good and for ill.
