Tag: Review
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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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On Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies
Yesterday, I finished reading Katie Kitamura’s recent novel Intimacies, which follows an interpreter at the International Criminal Court, who has recently moved to The Hague for that job. The novel vaults between various distances and immediacies, shifting narrative tense, sometimes mid-scene. Across this exploration of various “intimacies,” Kitamura is interested in the relationship between distance […]
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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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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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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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Horror in Revision: On the Contemporary Gothic
For LARB, I wrote about three contemporary books that are revising and rewriting gothic novels: Chase Berggrun’s R E D (Birds LLC, 2018), Sarah Perry’s Melmoth (Custom House, 2018), and Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad (Penguin, 2018). You can read the essay here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/horror-in-revision-on-the-contemporary-gothic/#!
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Odds and Ends: Fictive Probability in Helen DeWitt’s “Some Trick”
For LARB, I reviewed Helen DeWitt’s short story collection Some Trick (New Directions, 2018). My review contextualizes the collection in DeWitt’s larger career and thinks through her simultaneous representation and engagement with her characterization as a “brilliant” writer. Read it here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/odds-and-ends-fictive-probability-in-helen-dewitts-some-trick/
Adam Fales 