Books
In Conversation
SERIAL WANNABE
LEE KLEIN with Matthew Vollmer
Every time, I think oh boy, not because I don’t admire Lee’s work (I do) but because I have generally have enough to read as it is, but then curiosity gets the best of me and I open the document and start scrolling and find it difficult to stop. His latest book, which also seemed to come out of nowhere, arrived in the mail a couple months ago; I devoured it nearly in one sitting.
Matter of Factual
By Katharina SmundakAt the very beginning of Father and Son, as writer Marcos Giralt Torrente embarks on his first nonfiction project, he quotes Amos Oz, who writes, “he who seeks the heart of the tale in the space between the work and its author is mistaken: the place to look is not the terrain between text and writer but between text and reader.”
The Strangling Fruit
By Daniel LevineWelcome to Area X: a secluded stretch of Nowhere U.S.A. formerly known as the “forgotten coast.” The land has been invaded by an alien organism.
Philosophy Express
By Allen Guy Wilcox“In an Event,” writes popular Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, “things not only change, what changes is the very parameter by which we measure the facts of change.” A natural interpreter of human civilization, Žižek lays a framework for thinking about important change with his new book, Event: A Philosophical Journey Through a Concept.
Bloody Sunday
By Casey MurphyThe National Football League has been intensely scrutinized in its opening weeks this season, mostly due to grossly mishandling the domestic violence case of Ray Rice. It is rare for America’s most popular sport to be so openly and passionately attacked. It is also the ideal intellectual and philosophical climate for Steve Almond’s new book, Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto.
