Columns

The Spiraling Narrative

April 26th, 2012

A good story says something new about the world. An excellent story says something new about the world in a completely new way. Ideally, a narrative’s theme or principle meaning should be enigmatically original. More importantly however, it should be pervasive: it should haunt the story, taking so much residence that it becomes a fundamental cog in its internal logic, a presence reflected in every component of the storytelling process: structure, characters, plot. The power to do so is what ultimately separates great works of fiction from facile entertainment.

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LURID: Aleister Crowley - Print The Legend!

April 26th, 2012

LURID: vivid in shocking detail; sensational, horrible in savagery or violence, or, a twice-monthly guide to the merits of the kind of Bad Books you never want your co-workers to know you're reading.

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Thomas Pynchon: A Primer

April 25th, 2012

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon has a rare kind of fame: he’s one of the most well-known “recluses”, eschewing the generally standard media engagements expected of a writer of his status.

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Fallen Idols: Disappointing Truths About Five Famous Authors

April 25th, 2012

Now you can say it doesn't matter what an author is like as a person, it's all about the prose they create. You can say that and I will disagree. When I read Hemingway, I carry in my mental sidebar an indelible image of the man behind the prose: tweedy, moustachioed bourbon drinker; the man who liked to fish and hunt and whose idea of relaxation was to visit a bullring and watch a couple of toros bleed to death. I like authors to fit the prose they produce.

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The Top 10 Royal Historical Novels

April 24th, 2012

Why are royal families so fascinating? I think, as an American, the entire concept of royalty is so incomprehensible to me as to be wildly intriguing. And the plots in which these monarchs were embroiled - the violence and sexual escapades and atrocities and heroics - make for a damned good read.

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World Book and Copyright Day –The Best Holiday You Never Heard Of

April 23rd, 2012

In 2002, I was living in Madrid when I learned about the best holiday ever—Book Day (El Dia del Libro). On April 23rd each year, the Spanish celebrate some of the greatest writers who ever lived. The bookstores around Spain hand out roses with every book purchase, and there are literary events all over the country, including a three day long event in which they read Don Quixote de la Mancha, both books, from cover to cover. As a Word Nerd, this is quite a fantastic holiday; one that should be celebrated with as much zeal here in the US of A.

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Down The Rabbit Hole: Following Comic Book Creators

April 20th, 2012

I love comics. I love superhero comics especially. But mainstream superhero comics also disappoint me greatly and with alarming regularity. More so than any other medium that I enjoy, comics have regularly broken my heart. Usually this heartbreak stems from following characters rather than creators. Mainstream comics, unlike most other mediums I adore (books, films, music) have a vastness and a fluidity to who creates and/or maintains a certain character.

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Off the Beaten Path: Non-Traditional Fantasy Settings

April 19th, 2012

My last column dealt with George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and why I thought it was important. One of the reasons that series hit so close to the mark for me was that after growing up with a voracious appetite for epic fantasy in the vein of Lord of the Rings, I eventually grew tired of it. I didn’t feel like large, sprawling fantasies in medieval European settings were offering me anything new, anything I hadn’t seen in slightly different forms elsewhere.

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Three Comma Rules You Need to Learn Now! NO MORE EXCUSES!

April 19th, 2012

Something terrible has happened; teachers are actually instructing their students to drop the comma before the word and in sentences that use serial (or list) commas. I learned this today while talking to a coworker about some corrections he made to document. When I asked him why, he said his college professor had told him never to put a comma there, and she actually graded him down for doing so.

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Book Brawl: Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone Vs. The Magicians

April 18th, 2012

Welcome back to Book Brawl, in which we throw two books into the ring to watch them fight it out for the coveted title of literary champion. Today's pugilist publications are the first books in two different series about seemingly average boys being sent to magical schools: J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1997) and Lev Grossman's The Magicians (2009).

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