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Category Archives: literature

Why I read what I read

Monday, July 7, 2008

I finished Infinite Jest in January and, at the behest of a certain someone, recently picked up Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day.  Once again, I find myself meandering through a lengthy postmodern tome, this time set in a reimagined version of turn of the century America.  There are windships and æther, anarchists and Nikola Tesla, [...]

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Hysterical realism and the postmodern trademark

Monday, January 7, 2008

I finished up reading Infinite Jest a few days ago and I’ve been wandering around in a bit of a daze ever since. The length wasn’t as much of an issue as the general structure and nature of the novel–it was arguably one of the most difficult texts that I’ve gone through, but it [...]

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In defense of quirk

Friday, August 31, 2007

The latest rash of criticism from the literati has been targeted at quirk, or quirkiness, or whatever you’d like to call it. Manifesting itself in things like Dave Egger’s McSweeney’s, Ira Glass’s This American Life, and the films of Wes Anderson, quirk is defined as such by Michael Hirschorn in The Atlantic:
As an aesthetic [...]

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