[These are reviews, mostly of books.]

 

• “Local Depressive Bisexual Experiences Quarter-Life Crisis” (on Madison Newbound’s Misrecognition) – New York Times Book Review (July 29, 2024).
• Brad Waton’s stories refreshed the Southern literary tradition” – The Washington Post (July 18, 2024).
• “Alice Munro’s stories had a depth most novelists only dream of” – The Washington Post (May 15, 2024).
• “This page-turner upends the usual logic of crime stories”: on Megan Nolan’s Ordinary Human Failings for the Washington Post Book World (2/2/24).
• “Rand Illusion: Lexi Freiman’s The Book of Ayn“ in the Fall 2023 issue of Bookforum
• “This pioneering master of the uncanny is as relevant as ever”: on recent translations of ETA Hoffmann for the Washington Post Book World (11/18/23).
• “Old Weird America: The Dark Comedies of Charles Portis” in The Point magazine (6/28/23).
• “Forget it, Jake, It’s 1 Corinthians 15:51”: on I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore – The Sewanee Review #524 (Fall 2023)
• “Three New Story Collections Make Place a Protagonist” – the New York Times Book Review (5/14/2023).
• “Brood Meridian: Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger and Stella Maris” – Bookforum (Dec/Jan/Feb ’22-’23).
• “New Story Collections: From Nature’s Wonders to Worldly Hazards” – the New York Times Book Review (10/27/2022).
• “Doppelgänger, Poltergeist: William Brewer’s The Red Arrow“ – Bookforum, June/July/August 2022.
• “Family Saga. Capitalist Satire. Climate Thriller. Debut Novel.” – on Vauhini Vara’s The Immortal King Rao in the New York Times Book Review (4/30/22).
• “Get Lit: Writers on their Favorite Books of 2021” group project in Bookforum (Dec/Jan/Feb ’21-’22); I chose Dennis Cooper’s I Wished and Kevin Brockmeier’s The Ghost Variations.
• “Safe as Houses: Dana Spiotta’s Wayward“ in The Sewanee Review (Fall 2021).
• “Already Dead: Joy Williams’ Harrow“ in Bookforum (Sept/Oct/Nov 2021); one of Lit Hub‘s “10 Best Book Reviews of 2021.”
• “A Story Collection Steeped in Colombia’s Troubled History: Juan Gabriel Vasquez’s Songs for the Flames” in the New York Times Book Review (August 3, 2021).
• “Every True Pleasure Is a Secret: Allan Gurganus’s Southern Utopias” in Harper’s (April 2021).
• “Almost Nothing Left of Nowhere: On Don DeLillo’s The Silence“ in The Sewanee Review (Winter 2021).
• “A Ghost Is Born: The Collected Breece D’J Pancake“ for Bookforum (Nov/Dec/Jan 2020-21)
• “Life, and Other Interruptions,” on Susan Minot’s Why I Don’t Write for the New York Times Book Review.
• “Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing,” on Clare Carlisle’s Philosopher of the Heart for Bookforum (Summer 2020).
• After the Hard Living,” on Noelle Kocot for the Poetry Foundation.
• “Prisoners of Love: On Ottessa Moshfegh” in The Sewanee Review (Spring 2020)
• “The Moore the Merrier,” on Lorrie Moore’s Collected Stories in Bookforum (April/May 2020).
• “Elegant Variations,” a review of Jessi Jezewska Stevens’s The Exhibition of Persephone Q in Bookforum  (February/March 2020).
• “Revelation and Return: Sixty Years of Grace Paley’s The Little Disturbances of Man,“ Literary Hub (12/11/2019)
• “A Writer Who Finds Grace Beneath the Violence in His Stories,” on David Means’ Instructions for a Funeral in the New York Times Book Review.
• “An Answering Art: On Robert Alter’s Bible,” Jewish Currents (Summer 2019).
• “Close to the Bone: Mary Robison Reconsidered,” in The Sewanee Review (#504).
• Review of Thomas McGuane’s Cloudbursts in the New York Times Book Review.

• “Seizing the Day: Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang” in the Sept/Oct/Nov 2017 Bookforum.
• Review of Rachel Ingalls’ Mrs. Caliban in the L.A. Times.
• Review of Michael Robbins’s Equipment for Living in the L.A. Times.
• “Tongues Untied”, reconsidering Harold Brodkey in the Summer ’17 Bookforum (print only).
• A review of Compass by Mathias Enard, in the LA Times.
• “Flesh and Blood: the Saga of Halldor Laxness”, in the November 2016 Harper’s.
• A review of Kathleen Collins’ Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? in the L.A. Times.
• A review of Oddny Eir’s Land of Love and Ruins in the LA Times.
• “Eliot Weinberger, To Be Continued” in the Barnes & Noble Review.
• “Joy Williams’s Micro-Fictions Are a Trove of God’s Bafflements”, review of Ninety-nine Stories of God in the New York Times Book Review.
• A review of Rebecca Schiff’s The Bed Moved in the June/July/August 2016 Bookforum (print only).
• A review of Luke Mogelson’s These Heroic, Happy Dead for The New Republic.
• A review of Dana Spiotta’s Innocents and Others in the February/March 2016 Bookforum (print only).
• “The Purity of Something I Do Not Know: On John Wieners’ Selected Poems & Selected Journals” at Electric Literature.
• “Lucid Dreaming: Two Ways of Looking at Percival Everett” in the November 2015 Harper’s.
• “Dangerous to Human: A.J. Rich’s The Hand That Feeds You“ at the L.A. Review of Books.
• A review of “So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead” for the Barnes & Noble Review.
• “The Warmest Color: On On Being Blue Being Reissued at ARTNews.
• Review of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Where the Bird Sings Best for the B&N Review.
• Review of Matt Sumell’s Making Nice for the B&N Review.
• Review of Ben Metcalf’s Against the Country for the B&N Review.
• Review of Denis Johnson’s The Laughing Monsters for Bookforum’s 20th anniversary issue.
• “Wry and Dry: Reading the New Lydia Davis Book as Chinese Buffet”, New York Observer, 3/13/14.
• “39 Steps Interactive Adaptation Trips and Stumbles” at Kill Screen.
• “Mr. Bellow’s Planet: Saul’s Son Speaks Up” in the New York Observer.
• “A Bolt from the Blues: Fiona Maazel’s Woke Up Lonely“ in the April/May Bookforum.
• “It Ain’t Easy: William Gaddis’s Life in Letters” for the New York Observer.
• “Woes Make the Man”: On Donald Antrim’s reissued trilogy in the Bookforum summer issue.
• A review of Nobody Ever Gets Lost by Jess Row for Bookforum online.
• A review of Prosperous Friends by Christine Schutt in the New York Observer.
• A review of Luminarium by Alex Shakar in the September/October issue of Bookforum.
• “Things, Boundlessly” – on Louis Zukofsky’s “A” at the Poetry Foundation.
• Review of Jim Shepard’s You Think That’s Bad in the April/May Bookforum.
• On Barry Hannah’s Long, Last, Happy in the New York Times Book Review.
• An untimely review of Stories Up to a Point (1981) by Bette Pesetsky in the January ’11 Believer.
• Review of Matthew Sharpe’s You Were Wrong is in the Sept/Oct 2010 issue of Bookforum.
• Review of The Book of Jokes by Momus in the January 2010 Believer.
• Review of Under the Dome by Stephen King at Bookforum Online.
• Review of Roy Kesey’s All Over in the November/December 2007 issue of The Believer.