Word: readerly
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...assumed that, armed with this new technology, we would only have to touch our hips, gently, to that magical spot in order to secure a smooth entry. We soon learned, however, that it requires a good deal of awkward fumbling to find the sweet spot that turns on the reader and causes the door to yield. Worse yet, to do it with our wallet still in our pants requires a great deal of pelvic thrusting, prolonging the moment when, finally, our impatient rubbing provokes that high-pitched shriek of welcome entrance. More frustrating still is the ease with which...
...t.Thankfully, Smith’s novels don’t need me: they are wildly successful, and in many ways they deserve the acclaim they received. Smith is a gifted writer whose works are positively epic: plentiful characters, rich plot twists, and clever details that enthrall and intimidate the reader. Furthermore, she taps a store of compelling themes: race, immigration, colonialism, and ethnic and cultural ambiguity. But she does so with such a heavy hand that it’s impossible not to feel as if you’re being bludgeoned by a postcolonial hammer. “Like...
What would you write if you could write absolutely anything? This is the question that, as a reader, one imagined David Foster Wallace facing. Whereas ordinary authors resorted to the standard tricks of the trade--write what you know, look deep into your soul, whatever--Wallace seemed to have no earthly constraints. He knew everything and could look into anybody's soul he wanted to. Any writer in America would have killed for his talent, but the man to whom it belonged killed himself. On Sept. 12, Wallace's wife discovered his body at their home in Claremont, Calif...
...Sally (or Sybil or Sylvia) but madness itself. When Sally turns manic, it's as if some interstellar alien god is speaking through her, and you hang on to its every word. As a person, you want her to get better, but as a reader, you can't get enough of the crazy. ("Mania is a glutton for attention," says Dr. Lensing, Sally's gifted therapist. "It craves thrills, action, it wants to keep thriving, it will do anything to live on.") It's the old Romantic lie of mania, that it represents a heightened version of the self...
Don’t worry, O reader; it’s nothing personal. Although there’s a decent chance that you attended a private school, there’s also a decent chance that you’re a pretty smart cookie. As many of your classmates have proven, it’s very likely that you could have made it to these hallowed halls with only a public-school education. The point of this measure wouldn’t be to close any doors, but rather to throw them open—because it would leave both...