Like many, many others, we dived into the k-hole that is breaking down Breaking Bad. What follows is a series of gchat conversations between Jess Stoner and Carmiel Banasky about the show, its fiction connections, and our obsession. [We start from the very first scene of "Blood Money"] CB: I love this intro (I'm rewatching as we chat). It keeps with the pool motif. The pool has become a way to track the passage of time in the series. JS: I know! It brings you right back to the first ... [READ MORE]
NOTEBOOK
Things American: Yeah
If You Lived Here: An Interview with Danielle Evans
I’m always thinking about place in fiction. I happen to write about a particular place, an Alaska laden with myth and personal and familial history. And I want to know, while reading, how other authors capture the nuances, the sounds, the smells, the senses of a place. What types of spaces do characters occupy, what spaces exist between characters, even spaces between the words on a page? At what moments does an outer landscape become an internal and psychological landscape? There have been ... [READ MORE]
What We’re Reading
When our website was still incubating, we used our Tumblr to share what members of our staff had been reading lately. Now that we're up and running in the world, we thought we'd share a few of their summer reads here. Except to change it up a bit, we asked our them to include a GIF that corresponded with their read, in whatever way they wanted. As you can see, the results are surprisingly expressive. Happy reading, pals. Bluets by Maggie Nelson Don't Kiss Me by Lindsay ... [READ MORE]
Online Fiction: Interview with Anthony Abboreno
We're excited to publish Anthony Abboreno's story, "Filler," the first fiction post on our website in over a year. Abboreno's story is about the complicated relationship between children and their parents' expectations. There are lobsters with personalities, an ex-wife who loves New Year's Eve, and a man who tries to do his best, but falls short. "Filler" covers a lot of territory in few words. We hope you like it as much as we do. MM: I love how the daughter’s taste in food becomes something ... [READ MORE]
Things American: From Post-Black to Postmortem–The Tragic Death of Trayvon Martin
Trayvon Martin’s death and George Zimmerman’s acquittal are further proof that Obama’s two-term presidency and the spike in interracial marriage have not magically transformed America into some post-racial Shangri-la free of the demons of prejudice and discrimination. The country is post-black, as cultural critic Touré demonstrates in his book Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? Blacks, he explains, are post-black in that they are “like Obama: rooted in but not restricted by Blackness.” Rejecting ... [READ MORE]
Things American: How Mad Men & Upstairs Downstairs Negotiate History
Every so often a show comes along that attempts to take stock of and reflect upon the moral predicaments of the last half century—serving as a reminder for how far we’ve come, or how far we have yet to go. The strength of Mad Men—one of many strengths—comes from the show’s use of history not for plot, but for setting. In this way, the show is able to move its characters in and (mostly) out of the line of fire, the larger-than-life events the period is known for, allowing for distance and ... [READ MORE]