For Leo Bersani: On His 90th Birthday
Guest post by Mikko Tuhkanen A dual orientation in Leo Bersani’s thought never fails to make me tremble, for in it I think I recognize something indisputably true. On the one hand, Bersani repeatedly attends to the unavoidability of aggression in our encounters with the world: we are inhabited, he suggests,by an “intractable,” because constitutive, hatred of otherness. On the other, all such murderous impulses are supplemented by the logic of what Bersani, echoing Charles Baudelaire, calls “correspondence of… Read More »
Why we are addicted to narrative?
From government briefings to quirky “human interest” stories and double-blind Pub Med studies, narrative in all its multifarious forms is what we resort to, promising in various measure, consolation and comprehension. But we rarely ask why. Why we are addicted to narrative in the first place. Why our minds work this way.
Edwidge Danticat on Diaspora and Identity
The Haitian diaspora today, in my view, is very big and complex. You now have a lot of Haitian-born millennials who are adding another very important layer to the conversation. Some of them are in media, and what is highlighted about them is not even that they’re Haitian. They’re just out there excelling and doing their thing.
Ben Okri, post-publication reflections, and synchronicity
Having recently been alerted by my daughter via WhatsApp to David Wilcock’s The Synchronicity Key, blow me down if I didn’t experience my very own synchronistic event. In my initial blog, I had referred to myself as ‘something of an undercover agent investigating the writings of fellow African, Ben Okri’, the thrilling upshot of which… Read More »
How to draw a comic when you already have the story
Guest post by Chris Gavaler and Leigh Ann Beavers The below is an excerpt from Creating Comics, part of Bloomsbury’s series of Writers’ Guides and Anthologies. Begin with story events and let them guide page arrangement. When an artist receives a script from a collaborating writer, the process emphasizes story. Standard scripts divide page content… Read More »
What is tone?
Guest post by Judith Roof The below is an excerpt of the preface from Tone by Judith Roof Key Tone Tone Def: Etymology mid-14c., “musical sound or note,” from Old French ton “musical sound, speech, words” (13c.) and directly from Latin tonus “a sound, tone, accent,” literally “stretching” (in Medieval Latin, a term peculiar to … Read More »
Brandon Sanderson’s Fantasy Worlds
Guest post by Ritwick Bhattacharjee In his rather captivating introduction to Maurice Blanchot’s Aminadab, Jean Paul Sartre writes: “So long as it was thought possible to escape the conditions of human existence through asceticism, mysticism, metaphysical disciplines or the practice of poetry, fantasy was called upon to fulfil a very definite function. It manifested our… Read More »
Shirley Jackson and “Safer at Home”
Guest post by Jill E. Anderson December 14, 2020 would have been Shirley Jackson’s 104th birthday, and for those of us in the U.S., this day also marks about six months under some version of a forced quarantine. A thought has crossed my mind a number of times that time: what would Shirley Jackson have… Read More »
Happy Birthday, Willa Cather!
Guest post by Michelle E. Moore The exceptionally prolific writer Willa Cather was born on December 7, 1873 in Gore, Virginia. Her literary work blends fiction with documentary while spanning vast distances across geographies, relationships, and time. Her personal papers document a lifetime of relationships kept afloat by near constant letter writing, sometimes conducted as she traveled long distances by rail to visit friends and… Read More »