“Like any self-respecting Russian artisan, Ivan Yakovlevich was a terrible drunkard,” Gogol tells us. But he waits to share this—until after we have seen the nose that Ivan discovers inside a freshly baked loaf of bread—so that we don’t mistake the nose for a drunken hallunication. Whenever Ivan barbers
Over the weekend, I started to pull Summer Reading options from various bookcases. I’d been wondering aloud, last week, about how to mark the distinction between spring and summer. The fledgling stack is an excellent reminder that I should write about my spring reading now, while the scent of
You know how I was just saying that I felt like my short story reading was all over the place this year? Now that I am about to say that I feel as though my spring reading was all over the place too, doesn’t that suggest something is afoot? If it’s
As Rufus Redpen explains, in Maria Reva’s Endling, there is only one George Saunders. He’s the famous author who moves successfully between short- and long-form fiction, describing his lifetime of short-story writing as building custom yurts before he began construction on a mansion—a novel. “Oh, sure,” Saunders says: “I
This series launched in 2002, and I’m still here for it. Recently I read both Double Eagle and Black Ice, and thoroughly enjoyed them both. These are books seven and eight in the series, so rather than risk spoiling the overarching storyline, here’s what keeps me coming back.
