Category: Critical Essays

• Fiction Unbound: On Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost

  For someone who has written so eloquently about the creation of Frankenstein you would have to expect Solnit to know, all too well, that you cannot piece together a series of abstract ideas, assemble them, and call it a character.

  indirectlibre

  August 7, 2016

  Critical Essays

  essays, film, solnit, storytelling

• Sigal Samuel’s Hermeneutics

  In Sigal Samuel’s recent novel The Mystics of Mile End everyone is looking for a message. There’s the Meyer family, with David interpreting the vague murmurs of his erratic heart; his son Lev deciphering the flower caught in his teacher’s bicycle; and his daughter Samara seeking keys to climb the Tree of Life in order to fulfill her Kabbalistic journey. Lev and Samara’s…

  indirectlibre

  February 27, 2016

  Critical Essays

  academia, Barthes, Montréal, religion

• Haruki Murakami and Your Love Life as Metaphor

  As usual, this year brought some Nobel buzz for Japanese author Haruki Murakami, who is best known in North America for works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, and 1Q84. Also as usual, he did not win, much to the disappointment of his devoted fans. It so happens that I spent…

  indirectlibre

  December 2, 2015

  Critical Essays

  ramblings, World Lit

• The Millennium Trilogy and Relearning to Read the “Readerly” Text

  There was not – if I’m being honest – much thought behind my decision to suddenly drop everything nothing and finally read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. Not that I insist on putting too much thought into one’s choice of reading material. In fact, I would call myself a proponent of the spin-around-in-bookshop-and-point strategy of literary selection.…

  indirectlibre

  August 10, 2015

  Critical Essays

  Barthes, Sweden, vacation reading