"The poets grapple with what it means to create a purpose-built archive and the ways in which this impulse counters the traditional principle of the archive." Megan McKenzie on "Permanent Record" clereviewofbooks.com/read-backwar...

"[One could take] its aesthetic limitations as formal affordances... "Shadow Ticket" perhaps traces the attitudes and semiotics of pre-emergent fascism, [like a] historiographical broadcast from State fascism’s inchoate moment." Cobi Chiodo Powell on Pynchon clereviewofbooks.com/thomas-pynch...

A really interesting essay at @clereviewbooks.bsky.social about one writer's history of Big Five rejections since the 1990s & the effects of publishing's conglomeration even when one doesn't know conglomeration is the force at work.

"I now realized that for thirty years I’d had an imaginary Pietsch perched on my shoulder, and as I reworked sentences I kept (unconsciously) turning to him and asking, 'How about now? Would you take it now?'" Vince Czyz on publishing & conglomeration clereviewofbooks.com/the-age-of-c...

"While a fantastic beat reporter and astute ball-knower, MacMahon both perpetuates and falls victim to Publishing's hastily-written-athlete-biography-industrial complex. @podracingchamp.bsky.social on @bannedmacmahon.bsky.social's "The Wonder Boy" clereviewofbooks.com/i-think-its-...

It's important to rid ourselves of the idea that this kind of work should be free to all by default, at least until there's some new mechanism of supporting it.

We are introducing a small paywall. 3 articles free per month, then it kicks in. We didn’t make this decision lightly, and hope that you’ll join us in this new phase after publishing almost 1000 pieces for free over the last 7 years.

We are introducing a small paywall. 3 articles free per month, then it kicks in. We didn’t make this decision lightly, and hope that you’ll join us in this new phase after publishing almost 1000 pieces for free over the last 7 years.

An excerpt from Ahmad Almallah's Wrong Winds courtesy @clereviewbooks.bsky.social www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/from...

"Me, I am Goodness and Justice, and I want to kill the radish because he’s rich and the peasants are dying of hunger." from Sylvain Trudel's "The Harmattan Winds" (trans. Donald Winkler) @archipelagobooks.bsky.social www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/from...

march 2025 new books newbookrecon.substack.com/p/march-2025...

"You can wake up to someone day after day and still they’ll appear disfigured somehow, pummeled by the early light." from Sam Eichman's story "A Little Too Much Sun". www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/sam-...

"Compared to Stoker’s belief in the positive influence of the Enlightenment and traditional Christian faith, Eggers’s narrative is a darker meditation on modernity’s spiritual blindness." CRB's very own Bri Di Monda on Robert Eggers's "Nosferatu" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/robe...

"If a shared appreciation of culture is a means of expressing these desires covertly, 'Our Evenings' suggests that it can also prove treacherous." Peter Huhne on Alan Hollinghurst's "Our Evenings" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/alan...

"Introspection is a natural recourse for those of us who haven't been struck by a primal yen to be mothers. It’s also lonely and yields diminishing returns." @sophiastewart.bsky.social on Anastasia Berg's and Rachel Wiseman's "What are Children For?" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/anas...

"Labatut and Best both fear this outcome. But Labatut does not realize we already live in a world governed by an alien intelligence." Jordan Ecker on "The Automatic Fetish" and "The MANIAC" @versobooks.bsky.social @penguinpress.bsky.social www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/beve...

"I thought eventually Jo-Ann Fabrics would stop feeling like a translated Jo-Ann Fabrics, parallel to but separate from the source." @uawilk.bsky.social, from "The Keeper" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/from...

"Laughner...a tragic poet amidst the end of the industrial empire of which Cleveland and Northeast Ohio were a microcosm." Andrew Worthington interviews @aaronlange.bsky.social about "Ain't It Fun" and Cleveland's 70s punk scene: www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/aaro...

"To really diagnose a sick culture, you have to be actually curious about it. You can’t just reflexively disdain it." @mitchtherieau.bsky.social reviews Becca Rothfeld's "All Things Are Too Small" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/becc...

Ain't no fuckin way

"But more and more Robinson’s public statements have tended to emphasize a broadminded civic rhetoric and a wishy-washy liberalism that seem a far cry from the radicalism evinced in early works." Bailey Trela on Marilynne Robinson, from Vol 2.2. www.clereviewofbooks.com/subscriber-c...

Good. It’s horrific how other platforms abused their reach to strangle local, independent, and national outlets alike. I WANT to see news and actual vetted work and I WANT journalists to get rewarded for it. Because I want to live in a thinking human world over some AI generated slop dystopia

In the race to manifest pop culture dystopia in US society by the end of 2020s, “1984” team still holds commanding lead, but “Last of Us” crew looking like a darkhorse contender.

"The mother-writer is becoming its own category, one recognizable for its ambivalence and disclosure [...] of watching your creation live outside your control." Emma Heath on Miranda July's "All Fours" and Sarah Manguso's "Liars" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/mira...

"The narrators feel shut out of the world, but the world also is tangible and full of sensuality." A review of "Mammoth," and on the novels of WWB contributor Eva Baltasar (tr. Julia Sanches).

"For Mammoth, it’s language that lubricates the violent and oppressive machine-city, and has thus betrayed her." Collaborative review by Charlie Hope-D’Anieri and Sophie D’Anieri on Eva Baltasar’s “Mammoth” www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/eva-...

"Maksymchuk’s words accrue a mountain of humanity in the ends of inhumanity. Ascend it; peer over language’s walls. Can her poetics actually cross them all?" Michelle Chan Schmidt on Oksana Maksymchuk's "Still City" www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/oksa...

"At its most literal, the Frazier exhibit was put on by UAW members about UAW members." Rachel Horowitz on LaToya Ruby Frazier and Kathë Kollwitz at MoMA www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/lato...

"The novel fixates too much on its protagonist’s personal vendetta to make any provocative assertions about publishing’s fetish for a certain kind of “diverse” voice." Terry Nguyen on R. F. Kuang's 𝘠𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦

Wrote about tears of the kingdom for the paris review https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2023/07/07/fireworks-on-kenneth-anger-and-the-legend-of-zelda/

"I have left my phone at home as well as paper and pen. “What beauty can come out of mourning,” Zambreno ponders as I consider the midwestern crocus, shocks of blue in the telluric light." Hannah Bonner on Kate Zambreno's 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘙𝘰𝘰𝘮