Following the death of Nobel Prize-winning short story master Alice Munro this month, The Times has resurfaced Ben Dolnick's review of her work published in January. It included some astute observations about her illustrious genre: Even if she has only read Moby Dick, she can say with a straight face that she has read Melville, just as a person who has visited Paris can say that he has been to France. . But her short story writer has no capital. Even as she wanders through their collection, she sometimes feels like she's missing the main highlights. You never know when your passport will be stamped. (Thanks to his girlfriend Peter Bernstein of White Plains, New York, girlfriend Margaret Velarde of Denver, and others for spotlighting Ben's article.)
In a eulogy for Munro in Literary Hub, Johnny Diamond said: The hesitating, lost ones who kept going, kept getting lost, kept feeling so deeply and silently through the endless days that took us from one end of life to the other. ” (Barb Tidens, Metuchen, New Jersey)
Stick to the books: The Washington Post's Ron Charles has a bit of a rebuttal about Miranda July's novel “All Fours,” in which the protagonist turns her temporary home into a place of erotic self-discovery. “This motel oasis, designed for her comfort, feels to her like her revelation and revolution,” he writes. “But it's essentially 'A Room of One's Own' with Virginia Woolf's KY jelly. That's not the only thing that's slippery. Indeed, 'All Fours' is much more interesting than Woolf's essay, Although infinitely sexy, the novel's economic naivety feels almost deliberate. The narrator imagines that her newfound freedom is predicated on being more confident and having better orgasms, but in reality it is predicated on better childcare and health insurance. I am. ” (Melissa Gensler, Fredericksburg, Texas)
Also in the Post, Matt Bayh tried to track J.D. Vance's boundless buffoonery, including his appearance at Donald Trump's trial last week: “But if you're going to court for professional advancement and feel the need to pay tribute to a family patriarch accused of making illegal payments to porn stars, you're likely to check all the boxes.” (Stacia Lewandowski, Santa Fe, NM; Daniel Heckman, Decatur, IL; et al.)
Writing in The Atlantic, Tom Nichols marveled at all the awfulness surrounding Trump: “The Republican Party's embrace of Trump's nihilism is not a case of defending its leader on the familiar question, 'Dude, right or wrong?' What the GOP is currently doing is a deeper, more stomach-churning abdication of dignity, a rejection of moral agency in the name of ambition.” (Danny Boyson, Collegeville, Pennsylvania)
