Franzen, Tisma

Are the authors things I’ve written about recently.

I’ve lost track of why, exactly, I’m supposed to hate Franzen, but, alas, I do not. I wrote about his new novel for The Atlantic, and I’m sorry to say that I loved it: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/jonathan-franzen-crossroads/620176/

And I wrote about Serbian novelist Aleksandar Tisma, whose trilogy of novels about the Holocaust I cannot recommend highly enough, for the New Left Review: https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/no-recourse

I’ve been having some trouble writing lately, largely because I’ve had some trouble recovering my rhythm in the wake of quarantine. I used to be very adept at thinking of the various cafes and libraries where I worked as wholly distinct from my home, which I regarded (and still regard) as a domain of supreme laziness. These days, the home/work dichotomy has eroded so totally that supreme laziness seems to have saturated all the places where I used to be very productive. Nonetheless, crippling writer’s block and overwhelming lethargy notwithstanding, paying subscribers can expect some notes not about MacIntyre (sorry) but rather about Amia Srinivasan’s The Right to Sex, about which I have more thoughts than fit in my Boston Review Article, in the next few days. In the meantime, here are some pictures of the very glorious mountain that I climbed to celebrate my thirtieth (yikes) birthday last week: