What Makes a Life
The Index of Self-Destructive Acts: A Novel by Christopher Beha. Tin House Books, 2020. Hardcover, 528 pages, $28. Reviewed by Jessica Hooten Wilson This is a story that begins with the end of the world. As a young man named Sam Waxworth arrives from “the provinces”...
Stuck with Pound
Cathay: A Critical Edition by Ezra Pound, Edited by Timothy Billings. Fordham University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 364 pages, $35. The Bughouse: The Poetry, Politics, and Madness of Ezra Pound by Daniel Swift. Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2017, Hardcover, 320 pages, $27....
Failures of Interpretation
What Was Literary Impressionism? by Michael Fried. Harvard University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 408 pages, $46.50. Reviewed by Gregory Castle Impressionism arose in late-nineteenth century European and American literary art in response to a crisis in interpretation, a...
Accountancy and Authority
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. Back Bay Books, 2012. Paperback, 597 pages, $18. Reviewed by Eve Tushnet At a certain point you realize that David Foster Wallace is as much a horror writer as Stephen King, and the monsters under his bed are twins: absorption...
"Delsol’s analysis stands out for the breadth of its perspective. Her essay covers topics as varied as corporatism, the French love for status and strikes, immigration, religion and secularism, populism and the role of intellectuals, Jacobinism, and the EU..."