Category: Essays and Reviews
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The Way We Laugh Now: On I Think You Should Leave
For Los Angeles Review of Books, I wrote about the second season of I Think You Should Leave. You can read it here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-way-we-laugh-now-on-i-think-you-should-leave/
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Review of Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School
In the latest issue of Chicago Review, I have a review of Ben Lerner’s novel The Topeka School. I’m interested in the representation of time in his novels, especially as it distributes inequality across his image of the present. You can find the issue here: https://www.chicagoreview.org/issues/6401-02-03/
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The Unpostable
I reviewed Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This for Los Angeles Review of Books. My review tries to think through the novel’s style and wit to show how Lockwood evokes the kinds of things that can be expressed both on and off the internet. Read it here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-unpostable-on-patricia-lockwoods-no-one-is-talking-about-this/
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Forever Tonight
I wrote a short essay on Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” for Hyped on Melancholy. Read it here: https://www.hypedonmelancholy.com/forever-tonight
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Do Gay Be Crimes
I reviewed Christopher Chitty’s Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System for homintern. You can read it here: https://homintern.soy/issues/11-9-20/sexualhegemony.html
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A Tale of Two Valleys
For Public Books, I wrote about Anna Wiener’s memoir Uncanny Valley and the HBO tv show Silicon Valley. In grappling with the history and present of Silicon Valley, these both rely on nineteenth-century narratives and tropes to craft their own visions of contemporary capitalism. Read it here: https://www.publicbooks.org/a-tale-of-two-valleys/
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Let Them Eat Cake
For Avidly, a channel of Los Angeles Review of Books, I wrote about the recent phenomenon of people making cakes that look like things beside cakes. I use a marxist approach to aesthetics to try to understand the way that these cakes are mediating our contemporary experience of capitalism. It’s pretty jokey and somewhat ridiculous, but I think I actually make some useful points about the place of aesthetics and memes in our current moment: http://avidly.lareviewofbooks.org/2020/07/14/let-them-eat-cake/
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All That Is Solid Melts Into Smoke
For Chicago Review, I wrote a review of HBO’s show High Maintenance. My review tries to understand the conditions of labor depicted by the show and how it reveals the way we stay attached to certain modes of hope and life in contemporary capitalism. Read more here: https://www.chicagoreview.org/all-that-is-solid-melts-into-smoke/
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Review of Rachel Ingalls’s Binstead’s Safari
For Full Stop, I reviewed the reissue of Rachel Ingalls’s Binstead’s Safari (New Directions, 2019). Read it here: https://www.full-stop.net/2019/07/09/reviews/adam-fales/binsteads-safari-rachel-ingalls/
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Utopia Can Be Banal: The Unfinished Ballad of Kenny Dennis
For Full Stop, I wrote an essay on meta-fiction in the work of the rapper Serengeti, especially his Kenny Dennis projects. You can read it here: https://www.full-stop.net/2018/12/07/features/adam-fales/kennydennis/
Adam Fales 