Ten Opening Paragraphs for a Review of Jordan Castro’s New Books
“Readers who have been craving a comprehensive examination of the inner lives of pooping poets will not want to miss Jordan Castro’s new books Young Americans and if i really wanted to feel happy i’d feel happy already.” “Jordan Castro is one of the the Buckeye State’s most promising young poets, but unfortunately it seems unlikely that this year’s Ohioana Poetry Award will go to feeling so retarded/ staring out a window/ at a nice-looking tree/ navigating the internet/ beneath warm blankets/ fall in ohio.” “In creative writing, there’s...
J.K. Rowling, Garrison Keillor, and the Battle for the Soul of Small-Town Life
I’ve been listening to the audiobook recording of J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy, but I had to take a break from it. In Rowling’s first novel for adults, she gives us a small town full of Dursleys: jealous, insecure people who connive to land a vacant seat on a parish council. I switched The Casual Vacancy out for a few discs of Garrison Keillor’s “News from Lake Wobegon” monologues, which was like slipping into a warm bath of safe, simple comforts. Why was Keillor such a welcome respite?...
Ten Opening Paragraphs for a Review of Mira Gonzalez’s “I Will Never Be Beautiful Enough to Make Us Beautiful Together”
“In the Victorian Era, sex was not thought to be enjoyable for women, who were famously advised to ‘lie back and think of the empire’ while their husbands plowed away. For women in the ‘alt lit’ community writing about sex today, the equivalent maxim seems to be ‘lie back and think of the Internet.’” “Mira Gonzalez writes poetry that seems very true. I mean that both in the sense of emotional honesty and in the sense that she’s right, it does feel insane that you need money...
Ten Opening Paragraphs for a Review of Marie Calloway’s “What Purpose Did I Serve In Your Life”
“I’m a man. Does that make it impossible for me to review Marie Calloway’s What Purpose Did I Serve In Your Life, or does it make me the book’s target audience?” “In all the reviews I’ve written, I’ve never felt my opinion is so unnecessary as in the case of What Purpose Did I Serve In Your Life. The last thing the world needs is yet another opinion about Marie Calloway.” “Marie Calloway, in What Purpose Did I Serve In Your Life, has pulled off the unlikely feat...
A Review of J.K. Rowling’s New Novel that Does Not Make Constant, Punny Comparisons to Harry Potter
The following are the 3 types of books I can’t resist: 1) Long, head-sized novels that take weeks to read and leave you missing the characters as if they were family members, or at least the cast of Lost. 2) Books that are pop culture talking points that don’t necessarily need to be good, a la 50 Shades of Grey. 3) Anything related to Y.A. authors. In a sense, J.K. Rowling’s first “literary fiction” novel, The Casual Vacancy, embodies all 3 of these categories rolled into...
Slutty Words of the English Language
Geode: You’re a mass-produced volcanic rock easily broken apart by children to reveal polished crystals, commonly sold in state park gift shops? Bullshit. You’re just trying to get everyone to say chode. Tardy: Tardy did us all the service of combining the terms randy, tarnished, dirty, ready, dyslexic, and TA into one. Something for the struggling college freshman in all of us. Demure: Demure is a call girl who bides her time in a double-wide wearing a leopard leotard and painting her nails different shades of...
