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All the world’s a stage

If fiction can be reduced to the attempt to represent the world, the main dilemmas facing a fiction writer can be simplified to the following: 1) what is the world like? 2) how best to represent the...

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Life, Language, Reality

In “Termite Art, or Wallace’s Wittgenstein,” Lance Olsen summarizes Lenore Beadsman Sr.’s view as such: …language is a system of symbols that filters experience. We only know our lives through what we...

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Huh?

Show, don’t tell. Everyone has heard that familiar maxim of good writing. It probably applies more to fiction than non-fiction, just because some forms of the latter necessarily involve facts, hence...

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Chronic Ambivalence

“it’s not clear whether Y is pathetic and spineless or incredibly strong and compassionate and wise” (133) “Whether this is because he has a strong paternal urge and really wants to raise the baby or...

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Autonomy, Addiction & Appetite

“This appetite to choose death by pleasure if it is available to choose — this appetite of your people unable to choose appetites, this is the death. What you call the death, the collapsing: this will...

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Considering the lobster

After the usual hyper-observational riffs on the Maine Lobster Festival, DFW asks the question that sets the piece apart from most food/gourmet journalism: “Is it all right to boil a sentient creature...

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All the world’s a stage

If fiction can be reduced to the attempt to represent the world, the main dilemmas facing a fiction writer can be simplified to the following: 1) what is the world like? 2) how best to represent the...

View Article

Life, Language, Reality

In “Termite Art, or Wallace’s Wittgenstein,” Lance Olsen summarizes Lenore Beadsman Sr.’s view as such: …language is a system of symbols that filters experience. We only know our lives through what we...

View Article


Huh?

Show, don’t tell. Everyone has heard that familiar maxim of good writing. It probably applies more to fiction than non-fiction, just because some forms of the latter necessarily involve facts, hence...

View Article


Chronic Ambivalence

“it’s not clear whether Y is pathetic and spineless or incredibly strong and compassionate and wise” (133) “Whether this is because he has a strong paternal urge and really wants to raise the baby or...

View Article

Autonomy, Addiction & Appetite

“This appetite to choose death by pleasure if it is available to choose — this appetite of your people unable to choose appetites, this is the death. What you call the death, the collapsing: this will...

View Article

Considering the lobster

After the usual hyper-observational riffs on the Maine Lobster Festival, DFW asks the question that sets the piece apart from most food/gourmet journalism: “Is it all right to boil a sentient creature...

View Article
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