Fiction

All in a Day’s Work

by Brian Chappell July 12, 2011 Fiction

These types of genres are a narratologist’s dream, because one can spend an inordinate amount of time (even in a 190 page book like this one) teasing out the tiniest components of this unfamiliar world.

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Caleb’s Passing

by Brian Chappell June 20, 2011 Fiction

The climax of the novel is so mawkish that its downright dismissal of the fraught implications of his “achievement” are extremely troubling.

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The Narratology of LOST: Loops and Privileged Positions

by Brian Chappell June 8, 2011 Fiction

LOST generates the final thrust of its narrative through even more privileged positions.

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Stories Within Stories Within Stories Within…

by Brian Chappell May 23, 2011 Fiction

Okay! Fine. Tea Obreht is a veritable prodigy, and The Tiger’s Wife is uncannily good. Most (no, all) reviewers, as well as the likes of Colum McCann, TC Boyle, and Ann Patchett, say no less. But this novel is not just good for a twenty-five year old. Most of us would kill to kill it like she does.

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David Foster Wallace’s Open-Ended End Game

by Brian Chappell May 2, 2011 Fiction

Wallace over the years was most interested in narratives of suffering. Boredom (so closely linked to the problem of addiction, which he addressed in Infinite Jest) is one such type, and it takes center stage in his last book, an unfinished project published under the title The Pale King.

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Notes on reading David Foster Wallace’s short story “John Billy”

by Daniel Silliman April 8, 2011 Fiction

We passed the jars around and unscrewed Minogue’s bootleg lids.
We was silent at our table, expected T. Rex dead, or at least twisted, traumatized, Nunn-struck.
‘Hi,’ he said.

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Indie Bookstores: Kramerbooks

by Brian Chappell April 4, 2011 Fiction

I indulge fantasies of ownership, lament the limited capacity of my wallet and shelf space to accommodate all the books I want. But I gird myself and leave with nothing, happy to have looked, touched, but saved myself again.

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Sentimentality vs. Feeling

by Joe Weil March 29, 2011 Aesthetics

True feeling has the force of grace; sentimentality has the stench of morals. The word “should” and “must” cling to its fat cherubic legs. Half comprised of self regard, and the other half a mixture of cliche, the sentimental is close to the feigned regard of the funeral director: appropriate, and grave, but with one eye on the itemized bill.

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Underground Revisited by Yahia Lababidi: With Introduction by Brian Chappell

by Brian Chappell March 1, 2011 Fiction

Abominable Ladies and Gentleman, thank me for coming!

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Ur Poems: Brian Chappell

by Brian Chappell February 11, 2011 Fiction

Ashbery causes me to pause and reflect with awed humility that I could never do what he did in this poem.

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Glory Pee

by Lonely Christopher January 21, 2011 Fiction

Nobody else contemporary or comparable to the young Rachel B. Glaser writes as epiphanic structures as these or plays with the purpose and effect of fiction with such verve

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