Sometimes it’s difficult to tell which sort of minimalism is brilliant, the writing that’s the tip of an iceberg, and which sort is lazy, the writing that’s just a few crumbs and nothing more.
Much of the novel’s prose reads like a screenplay, with tedious descriptions of props, settings, and physical actions.
Dreams, Nightmares, and Future Visions: Congress of the Animals and The Influencing Machine
Reading Congress of the Animals is like playing a pirated video game that has no menu, no instructions, no map of where you’re going.
Perhaps, to care deeply for humanity entails being greatly disappointed by human stupidity, violence, laziness, treachery, by our failure to face peaceably our finitude and our mortality.
Ross Perlin’s Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy
Intern Nation asks some serious questions about labor and internships and how young people make it into the world these days.
Reading this book doesn’t just unearth the shivering ghosts of a war many people were content to ignore and forget.
Dan Clowes is experimenting with ways to not just listen to his characters’ inner monologues, but to look at how they remember and fantasize.
The book is as easy to swallow as the proverbial piece of cake, and takes about as much time to get through too.