"None of them had wallets or cell-phones or any ID. Just Viking stuff... And so it went, one after another, until every last Viking had bled out of the present." from "If the Vikings" by Semyon Khoklov clereviewofbooks.com/if-the-vikin...

"So it’s true that Zauner’s foreword (to Infinite Jest) is rooted in our time—just not the way some readers think. Set serially like a Zallinger March of Readerly Progress, the three forewords of Infinite Jest form a historical narrative." -Ryan William Lackey clereviewofbooks.com/finding-a-wa...

"But what they do demand, is 'someplace where every time we turn around we don’t see that damn machine staring at us.'" Dante LaRiccia on Pynchon on AI, and "Minstrel Island," an unpublished operetta by Pynchon and his collaborator John K. Sales. clereviewofbooks.com/ai-redux-on-...

Read two sections from Angela Woodward's AFTERLIFE at Cleveland Review of Books! (Message me for a review copy, with interview requests, etc.) clereviewofbooks.com/from-afterli... Cc: @fictioncollective2.bsky.social and @clereviewbooks.bsky.social

"The knock had happened on one of those other days, where the date reigned over its little space on the calendar’s grid, no appointments, no holiday, a day that had entered with morning and frayed into dusk..." from "Afterlife" by Angela Woodward clereviewofbooks.com/from-afterli...

"Morrow doesn't critique hope-as-nostalgia so much as eviscerate it...She is saying: run it back, learn the past, leave the past in the past, then don't ever, ever look back." -Emiliano Gomez on Kortney Morrow's "Run It Back" clereviewofbooks.com/emiliano-gom...

"When I say freedom feels like movement, I mean that it’s a driving force of possibility with simultaneous risk." -George N. Ramirez, for our 2026 Cleveland Humanities Festival Series. clereviewofbooks.com/freedom-feel...

"What might it mean to read Toni Morrison today?" Matt Weinkam kicks off us and Rust Belt Humanities Lab's essay series in support of "Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison," a statewide initiative led by Literary Cleveland. The series is supported by Ohio Humanities. clereviewofbooks.com/reading-toni...

Alligator is in many ways a spiritual sibling to Dragon’s Champ: their prose shares a practiced lyricism and an aversion to both socially corrosive modernity and environmentally destructive urbanity. Michael Knapp on David Ryan's "Alligator" clereviewofbooks.com/david-ryan-a...

"Well not only did this coffee cost me more than the other Subway and not only was it a smaller cup but look at how much they filled it." Stacy Skulnik/Robert Frost clereviewofbooks.com/4-poems-robe...

"A machine may be what modernity feels like, but that doesn’t mean it’s what it is. A machine has a design. With our digital addiction, as with most things in the human world, there’s no plan." Aaron Labaree on Paul Kingsnorth's "Against the Machine" clereviewofbooks.com/paul-kingsno...

"At a checkpoint, ranks close. IDs are demanded. People with weapons decide who you are." -Hilary Plum on Toni Morrison for our Cleveland Humanities Festival series on Freedom clereviewofbooks.com/morrison-in-...

"Here is Woolf at her most unvarnished, obsessed, her most playful and silly and unpolished and free. It’s refreshing, in a way, to see the woman who had perfected a craft, loose, imperfect, ardent." Emma Heath on Virginia Woolf's "The Life of Violet" clereviewofbooks.com/violet-and-v...

Last week, @clereviewbooks.bsky.social posted a great in-depth review of Patrick Wensink’s The Great Black Swamp! Here’s a quick preview, check out the full article at the link below! clereviewofbooks.com/shrugs-that-...

"I prompt: A Black woman’s hand near drawer” (onscreen, I receive three fingers, two thumbs, a foot made of fingers lurking, an unseen crouching body on top of the dresser) from "Residual" by Tisa Bryant clereviewofbooks.com/from-residual/

"[Poetry] must always deal in the dirty commodity of the word. It trades and hedges, extracts and reproduces so that...we find a kinship built from the shared, but uneasy and slippery, impulse to universality." Nicodemus Nicoludis on Terrence Arjoon clereviewofbooks.com/poetry-in-co...

Extremely fortunate and rare to have such a smart reviewer given space to write, and Matthew King did it so thoughtfully. @clereviewbooks.bsky.social is doing great work.

"from left to right, From A to Z, from high to low, from generation to generation, from all of us to all of you" Robin Beth Schaer, "From There to Here" for our annual Cleveland Humanities Festival series clereviewofbooks.com/from-there-t...

"The Great Black Swamp" is a call for readers to research their own hometowns’ forgotten environmental histories that have planted ticking public health time bombs across the land. Matt King on "The Great Black Swamp" by Patrick Wensink clereviewofbooks.com/shrugs-that-...

"He talked about communism. Or maybe I just remember it that way because Felix and him had met online and bonded over Marx and Russian. When they met, Felix was an 18-year-old girl with a shaved head. Now, he’s dead." Paperwhites, Willow Campbell clereviewofbooks.com/paperwhites-...

"Lacan’s Real is not the stories and laws which we think make up reality, but the raw void that appears when those stories and laws collapse. An abyss just out of reach, forever." "The Abyss of Fascism" by @johnwallbarger.bsky.social clereviewofbooks.com/the-abyss-of...

🤠🧡 I have ASSAY on Ashbery’s Breezeway up today at @clereviewbooks.bsky.social — clereviewofbooks.com/a-note-on-as...

"Given his decades-long career, it may just be that Ashbery had run out of things to say—that, being hyperaware of winding down his life and career, he had literally exhausted all opinions." [email protected] revisits John Ashbery's "Breezeway" clereviewofbooks.com/a-note-on-as...

"The scorching darkness underneath fascism is due, at least in part, to the way fascism replaces human beings with abstractions: race, purity, nation, rules." - John Wallbarger in @clereviewbooks.bsky.social clereviewofbooks.com/the-abyss-of...

"Lacan’s Real is not the stories and laws which we think make up reality, but the raw void that appears when those stories and laws collapse. An abyss just out of reach, forever." "The Abyss of Fascism" by @johnwallbarger.bsky.social clereviewofbooks.com/the-abyss-of...

Ben said Christmas is really sad considering the outcome of the life of Baby Jesus from "P.E.A.C.E. by Chariot Wish" clereviewofbooks.com/p-e-a-c-e-ch...

"In this haunted travelogue, the writers and scholars Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson attempt to sieve the landscape of their homeland through the surface of annihilation, to see what can be returned to common consciousness." -Xiao Yue Shan clereviewofbooks.com/raja-shehade...

"I feel my bones totally vibrating while watching the unfolding world as three screens...and so I know it is only a matter of imminent time before I collapse to the cellular, commencing my passage through walls to you" 4 poems by Thom Eichelberger-Young clereviewofbooks.com/four-poems-t...

"former Cleveland Mayor Anthony Celebrezze, asked levy, “You write poetry...do you sell it?” levy replied, "About 89 cents worth a day,”" -Alex Benedict on d.a. levy. First of a three part series. clereviewofbooks.com/the-lion-lyi...

"I’d noticed by then that time moves differently since the arrival of four thousand federal agents in the Twin Cities." a Minneapolis dispatch from Jack Christian on outrage, community, and Tom Morello + Bruce Springsteen's protest concert. clereviewofbooks.com/in-the-winte...

harsh but righteous review

"Cohen is [insists] upon a deep connection to a place she is actively othering. She is both photographer framing ironic images of gun-filled rooms and lung-shaped ashtrays, and the subject, posed in an exaggerated hillbilly costume." -Ella Gray Hickman clereviewofbooks.com/holy-cowtown...

I've got a short story up at @clereviewbooks.bsky.social about a cable home renovation show and how it causes a small town to fall, rise, and then permanently fall. Big thanks to Caren Beilin for her wonderful edits on this.

When the cable renovation show announced it was going to take over a different town for its mass renovation special, the town council called for an emergency town meeting right after the regular one. @molars.bsky.social,Townville, Cityton, Burgborough, Townburgh clereviewofbooks.com/townville-ci...

“There might just be another you down the line, the novel offers, should you fall into unforeseen circumstances of severe illness, or actively choose to construct one.” Meghana Kandlur on Patricia Lockwood’s “Will There Ever Be Another You” clereviewofbooks.com/down-the-rab...

God it delights me to see Chris Quinn going national for his efforts to turn journalism into an AI slop factory.

"A self-described exile, Toth fled Hungary after a public smear campaign was launched against her, for the “crime” of suggesting the introduction of certain inclusive books into schools' curricula, and the removal of more regressive others." clereviewofbooks.com/krisztina-to...

for a winner is every loser outright butler flat tire singing the license plate frame insisting “it cost to be a boss apply pressure” from "As If And" by Zach Peckham clereviewofbooks.com/from-as-if-a...

"Filoni and Groys convincingly show that Kojève was more than just a reader of Hegel. In many ways, he was the father of postmodernism and our own radical contemporary...The end of history is the eternal present of a bureaucracy without humans." -Isabel Jacobs clereviewofbooks.com/isabel-jacob...

"In my experience, it’s unusual to write an ending to a poem (or any piece of writing) that’s the ending I ultimately wind up with." @clairedonato.bsky.social on poetry and psychoanalysis. clereviewofbooks.com/kind-windows...

Wow these are bangers ! 😲😲😲

"spongebob is 海绵宝宝 which is literally sponge baby u say that sounds vaguely sexual i say u look vaguely sexual i prefer that name the toucan w/ the tidy mind who handles distribution at the paris review" two poems from @officialmchangpoet.bsky.social clereviewofbooks.com/two-poems-2/

“The model of art-making at play here is purgative, externalization intended as a means to forgetting.” In @clereviewbooks.bsky.social‬‬, Jon Repetti reviews Tatiana Tibuleac’s newly translated novel, “The Summer My Mother Had Green Eyes” - clereviewofbooks.com/tatiana-tibu...

"Hamrah’s signature genre [is] withering blurb-length “capsule” reviews of inane Hollywood product...snapped down to size, as if the movies weren’t worth the extra words." Joshua Sperling on the "anti-criticism" of @hamrahrama.bsky.social clereviewofbooks.com/capsules-of-...

I wrote about Tatiana Tibuleac’s “The Summer My Mother Had Green Eyes,” an absolutely astounding little novel that’s finally been translated into English after selling out in 17 other languages, for @clereviewbooks.bsky.social clereviewofbooks.com/tatiana-tibu...

"The dragon was born of legendary spaniel and so looks away, toward stupid nada, with kissable spaniel eyes. Its body is long though, seven or eight spaniels." an excerpt from Kyle Booten's "Gyms" clereviewofbooks.com/from-gyms-ky...

One of our editors @xandergershberg.bsky.social wrote this stunning dispatch on life in Minnesota as the people resist fascism. Please read!

I wrote an account that captures some of Minneapolis life right now amid ICE's occupation, the atrocities they wreck onto our communities, and the resistance Minnesotans have waged against it. Thank you @clereviewbooks.bsky.social for publishing! clereviewofbooks.com/the-chorus-b...

For the first time ever, the starred review has gone thermal. Stellar insulation for subzero criticism. It is meticulously embroidered, unreasonably soft, and in very limited quantity. This could be you.

"I meet a neighbor on one watch, and he tells me of what he remembers as a Chinese curse, 'may you live in interesting times'...I finally feel the curse’s logic." A Minneapolis dispatch from Xander Gershberg. clereviewofbooks.com/the-chorus-b...