Commentary

Commentary |

on Beirut Hellfire Society, a novel by Rawi Hage

“As the novel opens, a son is inducted by his father into the Hellfire Society, a clandestine group that arranges the disposition of dead people who have been denied conventional burial.”

Fiction |

from My Mother’s Tears

“… she delivered this sentence that, true or false, desolates, rots the soul: You must always, at every moment, distrust everyone around you … Even your father … And even your mother …”

Commentary |

on Against Translation by Alan Shapiro

“His fidelity to feelings and insights that cannot be reconciled with each other, his paradoxical equanimity that allows for anger and forgiving anguish, have grown more extensive …”

Fiction |

“The Other Side of the Dock”

“Looking at the sea too long made me nauseated, thinking inevitably of biology classes, of the teacher’s amphibious hands, explaining the cycle of life and of all those fish reproducing themselves so close to me, in a lukewarm salty broth.”

Commentary |

on Tap Out, poems by Edgar Kunz

“Kunz wants to look squarely at the ‘quiet hands’ not just of his father but of his entire world — and, if he can bear it, ‘not turn away.'”

Essay |

“The Small Psychoses”

“But that night before the robins. Coyotes and a struck sheen of moon. Others heard or you would have thought it was just your mind again.”

Commentary |

on Since When: A Memoir in Pieces by Bill Berkson

“An innovative poet and art critic in his own right, he had the good fortune to find himself in dialogue with some of the most inspiring figures of his time, at the heart of a fascinating cultural mix …”