New England Review of Books

boston, mass. // launched 2016 // better than a seditious truth

amplifying criticism, commentary and literary news // updates mon-fri
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Quarter 3, 2016 (displayed)

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Items of note this quarter:
Laureates support Iris Canada
HP and the triumph of fandom
The why of submitting poems
Tiny worlds in glass
Ode to Marge Simpson
Innumerable thank-yous
On masterpieces w/o masters
Five books about video gaming
Do you know all the words?
Eclectic RPG books on sale
Paperback cover remixes
Bloch on wish-landscapes
On the Great Derangement
Book notes from the Book Barn
Atwood BookTour Comix
William Gibson interview
Poster poems of fear
Why Grandpa translated Hitler
How Baldwin trolled the FBI
WLT free book give-away
On Auden at work
Perks of being a lit major
Mag to publish AI-only poetry
Publishers' hopes for pot books
GuyInYourMFA critiques Trump
The 18-miles-of-books test
Unafraid of the Internet
Temer's presidencial poetasting
€2k experimental poetry prize
A-Holes: A Type Book
NewPoetry's poënts system
A Saddam novella in English
Justin Croft ephemerals sale
Short film Motionpoems
Lerner, virgule, virga, vapor
Report of a poet PhD plagiarist
James Frey-ish in Zambia
Secret library apartments
On Bloom's ruling passion
Grossman witch book at Wink
The raw, primitive essence
Did Butler predict Trump?
AI sonnets are fooling no one
#SumitranandanPant trending
Poetry and music, bedmates
Pop favorites meet the Bard
Shakespeare on reefer
Ancient Greek cicada poems
Words in a galaxy far away
"Don't let it get too chichi"

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Reviews and
Criticism
09.23.16: Marginalia's Simon Rabinovitch reviews György Spiró's Captivity, "the ultimate Jewish road novel." link>>
09.12.16: A review in Pank of one of the great books of the year, The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan. link>>
09.08.16: A professional book critic on what she learns from the readers posting amateur reviews to Amazon and Goodreads. link>>
08.26.16: Natalie Janes considers possibilities inherent in the prose-poems of Susan Lewis. link>>
08.18.16: Daniel Hahn reviews William Egginton's new biography of Cervantes, author of the first modern novel. link>>
08.17.16: Sean Campbell extols the poetic influences of Melissa Green's latest memoir. link>>
08.16.16: Meena Kandasamy reviews K.R. Meera’s early novella set in the land of the Naxalites, The Gospel of Yudas, now in a new English translation." link>>
08.15.16: Rosie Milne finds Sarong Party Girls a "damn fine shiok novel, lah." link>>
08.12.16: Robert Bonazzi reviews two new puzzling indie press novels written by poets. link>>
08.11.16: The essays on boxing in The Gods of War commemorate, analyze and celebrate. read>>
08.10.16: "The refracted existence": Amanda Sarasien reviews João Gilberto Noll’s Quiet Creature on the Corner. link>>
08.09.16: Gavin Parkinson wants to bring attention to Surrealism’s link to sci-fi and to comics. link>>
08.08.16: Dustin Illingworth on The Reader in the Book, whose "archaeology of margins" gleans insight "from the calcified life at the edge of the text." link>>
08.05.16: After hearing him read in Cambridge, Onna Solomon reviews Eamon Grennan's most recent collection. link>>
08.04.16: "Utterly authoritative"; Mark Ford reviews The Poems of T.S. Eliot, vols. I and II. link>>
08.03.16: Dismissive, disdainful, haughty, refreshing: Becca Rothfeld on two recent essay collections by Tim Parks. link>>
08.01.16: "We ought not to underrate its emotional appeal." Orwell's 1940 review, terse and timely still, of Mein Kampf. link>>
07.29.16: The spectre of Darwish lingers in Israel, admonishing, preserving memory. link>>
07.28.16: Throwback Thursday! Dwight Macdonald's 1952 slam of the wise, whimsical and witless Great Books series. link>>
07.27.16: Tara Campbell reviews a novelette by Jonas Karlsson, in which one's happiness is billed at exorbitant rates. link>>
07.26.16: The interior and exterior views on display in The Inner Circle by Nathan Hoks. read>>
07.22.16: Laura Miller reviews a novel which imagines an America without a Civil War. link>>
07.21.16: Peter Gordon finds "unexpected surprise" in Mariposa Gang and Other Stories. link>>
07.20.16: Peeking behind the curtain: Fabiana Cabral reviews Blue-Collar Broadway. read>>
07.18.16: "We need, first, to undo the old ways of thinking." Robert Archambeau reviews a new book by poet Marc Vincenz. link>>
07.14.16: Peter Brown reiews four recent publications which refract the glow of Byzantium. link>>
07.13.16: LARB reviews a collection by Christos Ikonomou, of short stories set in the working-class streets of Piraeus, Greece. link>>
07.12.16: Shaping up to be this summer's hit beach read, a new supernatural noir from filmmaker Neil Jordan. link>>
07.11.16: "Modernity impinges on legend…"; Tom Daley reviews Sarah Gridley's Loom. link>>
07.08.16: Sassan Tabatabai reviews a critical edition and publication history of FitzGerald's trans. of Khayyam's Rubaiyat. read>>
07.07.16: Mangalesh Dabral’s new collection is "colloquial without being regional, direct without being didactic." link>>
07.06.16: A review of I Am No One, "Franz Kafka's The Trial for a new century." link>>
07.05.16: Charlotte Runcie reviews Falling Awake by Alice Oswald for The Telegraph. link>>
07.01.16: "The greatest character in her books is Mary Roach herself." Grunt, reviewed. link>>
06.30.16: Migration and civil society à la Gramsci: a review of Solidarity without Borders. link>>
06.29.16: Brenda Shaughnessy's new collection, So Much Synth, reviewed by Lisa Butts. link>>
06.28.16: What Josiah Van Vliet found wanting in Richard Dawkins' A Brief Candle in the Dark. link>>
06.27.16: Unraveling the codes of Jamaican machismo, and other aspects at work in Colin Channer's Providential. link>>
06.24.16: "Cynicism and hope jostle for position in Dorthe Nors' new pair of novellas." link>>
06.23.16: Emanuelle Degli Esposti on Linda Jacob’s new history of New York's Syrian past. link>>
06.22.16: "Showers of Stars from the Universal Feminine"; Paul Blumer on Naomi Wolf. read>>
06.21.16: The authors ask if it is time to replace traditional police forces with "alternative ways of fostering safety." link>>
06.20.16: A Stalinst-era novella (trans. Alex Zucker) joins the Czech literary canon. link>>
Excerpts, Features
and Interviews
09.21.16: “I called you tiger lily . . . but you are leche de tigre;” a poem by Gwendolyn Garcia. link>>
09.14.16: Lamda Literary and Nepantla Journal present Ocean Vuong and Christopher Soto in conversation. link>>
08.31.16: David Yezzi's interview with JHU Press about the legacy of John Irwin and the future of The Hopkins Review. link>>
08.17.16: "Donald Ray Pollock’s Heavenly Table Is Set With Violence and Heart." link>>
08.25.16: “and sure in language strange”; a new poem by Sassan Tabatabai. link>>
08.16.16: And Other Stories does a Q&A with the folks running Type Books in Toronto. link>>
08.15.16: Five years later, Michael Anania's open letter concerning the evaluation in higher ed of creative writing publications still seems acutely relevant. link>>
08.12.16: An interview with the founders of Transit Books, on the power of literary translation to bridge cultural divides. link>>
08.11.16: C. E. Morgan, author of The Sport of Kings, talks literary sexism, regionalism, and more, in discussion with Lisa Lucas. link>>
08.10.16: Nathalie Handal talks with Yahia Lababidi about the moods of Cairo. link>>
08.09.16: "What shits we were." In an excerpt from The Accidental Life, editor Terry McDonell tells of showing up at a stuffy dinner with Edward Abbey. link>>
08.08.16: Le Monde chats with Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt re: writing, sport, and humanism. link>>
08.05.16: Anjum Hasan, beginning with and returning to Mahasweta Devi, dwells on literature in the age of disappointment. link>>
08.04.16: A conversation with Gisa Klönne, one of Germany's most famous crime writers. link>>
08.03.16: Sample a chapter from forthcoming fantasy novel Labyrinth Lost, a modern bruja's journey to find her family. link>>
08.02.16: A spontaneous roundtable on François Luong's FB wall, discussing the stigma against self-publishing. link>>
08.01.16: From Fireside Fiction Company, an important special report on #BlackSpecFic. link>>
07.29.16: Talking with Writer to Reader, Joshilyn Jackson explains how race and police shootings shaped her new novel. link>>
07.28.16: John Keene on the re-queering history and finding lost voices in American fiction. link>>
07.27.16: Michael Orthofer on how US books are overrated, disappointment with lit studies in college, and much more. link>>
07.26.16: Closed cultures, rigid teaching? Rhea Dhanbhoora assesses possible factors in poetry's decline in India. link>>
07.25.16: The first twenty pages of Complayntes for Doctor Neuro by John Matthias available on the Shearsman website. link>>
07.22.16: Geoff Ryman begins profiling 100 African writers of science fiction and fantasy. (h/t Cory Doctorow). link>>
07.21.16: Young Kashmiri poet Inshah Malik dedicates twenty poems to the slain. link>>
07.20.16: "Critique comes from below": Rita Felski on the hermeneutics of suspicion. link>>
07.19.16: The unpredictable vs. the automatable. A new history of word processing touches on gender, creation, and the myth of literary perfectability. link>>
07.18.16: "Maybe it really does come down to faith and mystery": Charles Wright in conversation with Lisa Russ Spaar. link>>
07.15.16: "A momentary stay against confusion": Philip Purser-Hallard interviews sci-fi author Dan Simmons. link>>
07.14.16: Sci-fi editors and writers discuss why dystopias and anti-utopias remain popular. link>>
07.13.16: In Le Matin, Rachid Oulebsir recalls Si Mhand, the father of Berber poetry and spirit of the Berber Spring. link>>
07.12.16: That old mauvaise foi Sarah Howe on how culture reads poems by women as "artlessly autobiographical." link>>
07.11.16: 132 years later, James Morgan Hart's recommendations for the college course in English are not entirely obsolete. read>>
07.08.16: Robin Richardson on why she started a no-boys-allowed literary magazine. link>>
07.07.16: Michael Robbins in defense of book collecting. link>>
07.06.16: David Pilling chats with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie over jollof rice in Lagos. link>>
07.05.16: A reprint of Bliss Carman's 1904 essay, "The Purpose of Poetry." read>>
07.04.16: Ed Simons seeks out the authors of American epics, from Bradstreet to Rankine. link>>
07.01.16: Rowe and Simonds in dialogue, reviewing two recent books by Ben Mazer. read >>
06.30.16: Tom Ley on the vagueness of male confessions in the modern essay. link>>
06.29.16: In Berfrois, an excerpt from Constellation by Adrien Bosc, trans. Willard Wood. link>>
06.28.16: Craig Munro explains how to sell a book, for The Sydney Review of Books. link>>
06.27.16: From the New Criterion archives, Roger Kimball reviews Jacques Barzun. link>>
06.24.16: A brief literary cultural history of the mimeo. link>>
06.23.16: A new genre in Chinese writing. "'Mohuan' is 'magical unreal,' and 'chaohuan' is 'surpassing the unreal.'" link>>
06.22.16: Josephine Livingstone on the eerie power of the medieval Pearl poem. link>>
06.21.16: An interview with poet Melissa Green, author of The Squanicook Eclogues. link>>
06.20.16: Two hundred years ago, Mary Shelley spent a night telling ghost stories. link>>
New Books and
Literary News
08.17.16: In Words Matter: Writings Against Silence, writers argue that story and diversity are the strength of a culture. link>>
08.16.16: How some authors are blending methods from traditional and self-publishing to get their work to readers. link>>
08.15.16: How to ban a book in India; or, the ongoing case of Perumal Murugan. link>>
08.12.16: Video profile of Josh Spencer, owner of The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles. link>>
08.11.16: Katy Derbyshire on the radical reasons behind Women in Translation month. link>>
08.10.16: Few surprises in a list of recent top-sellers in India in the fantasy genre. link>>
08.09.16: Rachel Cooke on Ben Ehrenreich's new book The Way to the Spring, and other titles related to Palestine. link>>
08.08.16: Marcus Books to reopen in San Francisco. link>>
08.05.16: Historians, novelists, poets, translators, and of course journos, at Journalism Week, in Bogotá August 8-12. link>>
08.04.16: Anuradha Sengupta on the new, more diverse era in young adult literature. link>>
08.03.16: Supporters and staff of liberal Chinese magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu vow to fight forced closure. link>>
08.02.16: The Singapore Literature Festival in NYC returns for its second year. link>>
08.01.16: A review of Ghachar Ghochar, a novella about the disappearance of middle class values as a family embraces the nonsense of wealth. link>>
07.29.16: A book on the way we die now; one which resists tying up those loose ends. link>>
07.28.16: Selina Cheng's compiles a Black Lives Matter summer reading syllabus. link>>
07.27.16: An excerpt from Tom Wolfe's The Kingdom of Speech, on the origins of Chomsky. link>>
07.26.16: Preparations underway for Soweto's first literary festival, 19-21 August. link>>
07.25.16: Stanford scholar finds diverse views of Islam in the modern poetry of Iran. link>>
07.22.16: For summer reading, see Derek Miller's list of the top 10 books about Iraq. link>>
07.21.16: Hungarian Literature Online on Péter Esterházy, who passed away last Thurs. link>>
07.20.16: Two new titles from the Cahiers series, from Kirsty Gunn and Javier Marías. link, link>>
07.19.16: Making Sense of the Brexit Crisis, free from Verso, featuring writers airing thoughts on the EU referendum. link>>
07.18.16: Press announcement, and excerpt, from new collection of literary essays by Canadian Michael Lista. link>>
07.15.16: Only two weeks left to see this London exhibit of magician John Dee's library. link>>
07.14.16: Literary figures call for release of Arab-Israeli poet charged With incitement. link>>
07.13.16: Through Thursday, a poetry summit in Dakar, Senegal, hosted by the International House of Poetry, Africa. link>>

07.12.16: A Lame Duck alert re: two new publications by Clayton Eshleman, from Wesleyan U.P. and Black Widow Press. link>>

07.11.16: Farhang Foundation and Yale U.P. release English trans. of Dehkhoda's Charand-o Parand, "Fiddle-Faddle." link>>
07.08.16: There's a crowd at "Right Now", Public Pool’s real-time platform for poets to respond to crisis as it happens. link>>
07.07.16: The small and prestigious Editorial Institute at BU fears for its future. link>>
07.06.16: Jonah Lehrer, with a new book, assures readers he has turned over a new leaf. link>>
07.05.16: The Guardian reports on how Brexit might impact book sales and lit culture. link>>
07.04.16: Le Devoir reports the death of Yves Bonnefoy. link>>
07.01.16: The TLS: "Sir Geoffrey Hill, one of England’s few indisputably major post-war poets, has died." link>>
06.30.16: New edition of Ibsen's Peer Gynt and Brand , in verse translation by Geoffrey Hill. link>>
06.29.16: Michigan Radio: "Swarm Theory is a gripping work of Midwest Gothic." listen>>
06.28.16: What will become of the birthplace of playwright George Bernard Shaw? link>>
06.27.16: Bill Marx on The Boston Globe's anouncement of reduced arts & book coverage. link>>
06.24.16: First translation of the Qur'an into Russian unveiled; the first by a Shia scholar. link>>
06.23.16: Jonathan Cape acquires Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds for Spring 2017. link>>
06.22.16: RIP Gregory Rabassa, translator of Cortázar, García Márquez, and others. link>>
06.21.16: New smartphone app to create location-based narratives built from series of fictional short stories. link>>
06.20.16: New program to give Maltese literature its due. link>>


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