Fiction
Not Quite Stories—Alice Munro’s Almost Autobiography
LAST WEEK, Salon reported that Philip Roth is retiring from writing fiction by translating an interview from a French magazine. Roth’s publisher confirmed the author’s statement, but if they had not, it would not have been the first time that an author sighed loudly, expressed ennui, and led his attentive fans astray. READ MORE >>
A Middlemarch for Middle America
Room for Improvement—Emma Donoghue’s Limp Short Stories
THE CONCEPT OF the “sophomore slump” haunts most popular media: the “one-hit wonder” pop singer unable to catch fire again, the movie franchise that disappoints on second outing. Literary artists seem no less susceptible to an inability to compound artistic triumph. Rather than underwhelm with a weak follow-up novel, though, the breakthrough novelist all too often regresses to the short story. READ MORE >>
