Anjali Joseph (Literary Activism, 11/2021), “Madame Bovary and the Impossibility of Re-reading”: “In a way it’s not a novel about human characters at all: it’s a novel of objects and insects and sunlight and birds, of stains, or habit and repetition. A…
Nominees for the Goodreads Choice Awards 2021
The opening round nominees for the Goodreads Choice Awards have been announced. More than a dozen have previously appeared on Fanfare. Within each category, the nominees are sorted here to approximate very roughly how many Goodreads users have read the…
“I know that my only chance now is to be reclassified”
“The Stateless Person’s Tale” & “The Arriver’s Tale,” as told to Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah (previously). “Delia’s Return: The Migration and Deportation of an Unaccompanied Child” by Lauren Heidbrink, Delia, and Gabriela Afable (American Anth…
True Philippine Ghost Stories
Romano Santos (Vice, 10/27/2021), “Remembering the Thrill of Reading ‘True Philippine Ghost Stories'”: “‘Very chilling stories, indeed. I can’t imagine ever seeing someone’s doppelgänger. But for sure, I am not looking forward to seeing mine,’ Mendoza …
Three and/or Sixty-One Literary Bears
Patricia Lockwood (LRB, 08/12/2021), “Pull Off My Head”: “Is Bear one of those 1970s books about growing out your armpit hair? Kind of, but not only. Is it a metaphor for our relationship to nature? Fuck off.” Marlena Williams (LitHub, 10/23/2020), “Sy…
Plainte – Chekoua – Lamentation / Épreuve – Mihna – Hardship
Chris Silver (Gharamaphone): “In May 2020, I posted Sariza Cohen’s stunning recording of ‘أَشْكُوا الْغَـرَامَ’ (Ashku al-gharam) [Soundcloud], released … in 1938. This is the other side of that record [Soundcloud]. It is no less remarkable. Here the…
25 Playwrights and their Plays, 1700-1799
Mary Pix (1666-1709): Manchester Metropolitan University recently posted a complete performance (production credits) of Mary Pix’s comedy, The Beau Defeated (1700). The play was also adapted by the Royal Shakespeare Company under the title The Fantasti…
“We are all Martians”
Natalija Majsova (06/09/2020, Strelka Mag; also in a video lecture for the Canadian Centre for Architecture), “Soviet Sci-Fi Film and Different Modalities of Future Ecosystems”: “Irina Povolotskaia’s 1967 debut The Mysterious Wall [75 mins.] pioneered …