Books

'Totalitarian Terror Isn't Operating On Your Schedule': An Interview with Jim Shepard

The Book of Aron author on the challenges of implicating Jews in a story about their suffering and the point of fictionalizing the Holocaust. 

Beauty in the Service of Others: Remembering James Salter

On the author of A Sport and a Pastime, Light Years, and Last Night, who died last week at the age of 90.

'You Don’t Get To Be The Writer You Want To Be': An Interview with Mat Johnson

Talking with the author of Loving Day and Pym about telling realistic ghost stories, the upside of illegal downloading, and the surprisingly radical idea that writing should be entertaining.

The Female Gaze of Sally Mann and Kim Kardashian West

In new books, Mann and Kardashian West exploit moments of subjectively felt beauty and power to capture the material world around them—one often, by default, represented through a male eye.

What Comfort Does 'Terror' Bring?

The word "terrorism" can draw senseless violence into a larger narrative, but the modern application of the term is inconsistent and dangerous.

John Vaillant and Louise Dennys in Conversation

The author of The Jaguar's Children speaks with his long-time editor about his new novel, moving from nonfiction to fiction, and the intimacy of the author-editor relationship.

Odds and Sods: On Rachel Kushner, Roberto Bolaño, and Literary B-Sides

As interviews, explanatory essays, and other process-focused publishing artifacts become inescapable parts of the literary package, do we have to reckon with novels on terms other than our own?

Lives From New York

On Kim Gordon's Girl in a Band and Robert Christgau's Going Into the City.

The Essence of Archie

Through their many permutations, Archie comics have always evoked a certain adolescence—even when their tangles of anachronism likely felt foreign to any real-life teens.

'That Old Lady is Really Letting it Rip': An Interview with Alexandra Fuller

The author of Leaving Before the Rains Come on how to write fairly about divorce, whether anyone can truly "have it all," and the perils of "bumper-sticker feminism."