America
TWGGAWI™
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Ripley and the enduring story of the white guy getting away with it. « Even with murder. Especially with murder! »
Streuselkuchen
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A story about coolness. « The phone rings. It is Jim Jarmusch, and he asks if I want to come over to his place. »
Schwarzeneggerology
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On Arnold, action cinema & Übermenschlichkeit. « Arnold Schwarzenegger was action cinema’s Adamic man, alternately entering and exiting normal human time. »
Flags & bones
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On Curzio Malaparte’s Europe — and ours. The midcentury novelist read anew, on war’s aftermath and transatlantic romance. What was, or is, « postwar Europe », anyway?
Gerard Croiset & the adventure of the psychic detective
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The clairvoyant Dutch grocer who charted the frontiers of parapsychology and lent a hand to the FBI. « Unbelievable but true! »
A sangre fría
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Fernanda Melchor’s prose hits you square in the face, but its lyricism works differently in Spanish. On Veracruzano modernism, lyrical slang, and worlds so new that style falls apart.
How Americans edit sex out of my writing
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What is editing? Two people who both lead a literary life — an augmented reality where the connections between existence and sentences are investigated daily — wage sensual war for the soul of the page.
Football is not football
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How do literary movements arise? About thirty years ago, I watched one emerge out of nothing: the subgenre of « literary » football books and magazines. Not exactly the birth of modernism, but it still taught me something about how cultural transmission works within Europe.
A kayak in Zierikzee
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Was a Dutch town founded by Inuits in the 9th century? On American discoveries of Europe.