Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Fiction Anemic's Review of "Where will you go..."

Now, this is what I'm talking about.

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Monday, March 17, 2008

BASS: Fiction Anemic's Review of My Brother Eli

"Hey Louie, you don't happen to know Jacob Foxx Greer, do you?"

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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

SynedoChick’s Review of “Riding the Doghouse” (Best American Short Stories 2007)

FictionAnemic, I had a similar reaction to this story. It seemed like a breath of fresh air--

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Randy DeVita's "Riding the Doghouse"

FictionAnemic coughs her way through a review of Randy DeVita's "Riding the Doghouse" that should have happened a month ago. Careful, I'm still contagious.

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Thursday, February 7, 2008

Is TC Boyle calling his teenage protagonist a dog?

My first take on T.C. Boyle's Balto.

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Wednesday, February 6, 2008

SynecdoChick’s Review of “Balto” (Best American Short Stories 2007)

“There are two kinds of truths, good truths and hurtful ones” (55). Now that’s a first line …

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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

SynecdoChick's Review of "Solid Wood"

Fiction Anemic, that’s an interesting observation about the ages of the characters in the first three stories. I didn’t catch it—what I did notice was 1) rich white people in New York, 2) rich white people on the mid-Atlantic coast, and 3) rich white people in Florida. I don’t want to give anything away, but I read ahead. Next week, we get to read about rich white people on the West Coast, so that will be a real change of pace …

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FA's Review of Ann Beattie's Solid Wood

Doves and fire aren’t the only things coming out of those pins in Ann Beattie’s, Solid Wood.

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Monday, January 28, 2008

BASS '07: FA's Follow-ups on John Barth's Toga Party

It's almost too late to talk more about Toga Party, but I can't resist but to throw a few more questions out there about the rattlesnake-in-the-mailbox ending and the identity of the narrator. Spoilers abound.

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SynecdoChick's Review of "Toga Party"

I’m going to defy the name of this blog and say that this story gave me nothing to bitch about.

I think the “The Toga Party” skillfully functions on two levels: slice-of-life realism and metaphor/allegory. A toga party is a believable theme for a cocktail party thrown by aging baby boomers (Doc, Dick, and Susan are a little older, but the Hardisons seem to fit the boomer demographic), so it worked on a literal level, while the party also served as a neat metaphor for America’s status as an empire on the edge of a steep decline.

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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Second Volley: Pa's Darling

Y'know, I really don't want to say I hate this (for a number of reasons I'll go into later), but I'm not at all disappointed you did. Thank you.

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First Volley: Fiction Anemic's BASS review of John Barth's Toga Party

It's taken me a while to comment on John Barth's Toga Party, the second story in BASS. In fact, I was going to make some initial comments, but I knew if I did I would be commenting on something that was building up to surprising ending.

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Tuesday, January 15, 2008

SynecdoChick's Review of "Pa's Darling"

You said that you didn’t “get” this story – I don’t think there was a lot get, honestly. I’ll say what you wouldn’t say: I didn’t like it.

I think this story falls within the genre of literature about upper class New Yorkers who worry about whether they’re upper class enough, whether they’re the right kind of upper class, or whether monopoly/commodity capitalism is degrading the qualities that define the upper class so that the “true” upper class is superceded by a boorish new breed of bourgeoisie. The story also deals with the way that people—women in particular—become commodities of fluctuating value in this (degraded) class system.

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Sunday, January 13, 2008

First volley: Pa's Darling by Louis Auchincloss

Pa's Darling, a story by Louis Auchincloss that opens the Best American Short Stories of 2007, obviously isn't my darling...

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