Vol. 1, Iss. 1Exit Ghost, by Philip Roth What happens when America’s most phallocentric novelist destroys his protagonist’s penis? He writes a bad book. It is almost incredible that the very man who penned Goodbye, Columbus, Portnoy’s Complaint and American Pastoral, among other gems, could produce the tired, stale prose in Exit Ghost. Ironically, Philip Roth [...]

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Vol. 1, Iss. 1 The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, by Michael Chabon  
When Michael Chabon declared in 2002 that modern short fiction was comprised almost entirely of “the contemporary, quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory story,” it was taken as an oath that his universally acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay would only be the beginning [...]

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Vol. 1, Iss. 1Divisadero, by Michael Ondaatje Michael Ondaatje’s most recent novel, Divisadero, intertwines multiple narratives overlapping in their settings, characters and parallel story lines. Ondaatje’s novel follows his description of a villanelle, a French form of poetry that repeats “familiar moments of emotion” rather than moving in a linear sequence. Ondaatje guides the reader through [...]

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