Tag Archives: Literature

a deeper and whiter grey

Posted on September 3, 2013 by rustichello

Strange memories of a nervous election night. Five years later, six? It seems like a lifetime. It felt like a peak, a summit of sorrow. It was a night built around that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of … Continue reading →

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pat malone

Posted on April 8, 2013 by rustichello

I read Jonathan Franzen’s second book of essays last week and they are well worth the time, they’re erudite and thoughtful and engaging. I spent a lot of time reading the title essay, Farther Away, which is a meditation on … Continue reading →

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Will Self’s Dorian

Posted on September 6, 2012 by rustichello

There’s a moment in Andrew McGahan’s Last Drinks where the most chronic of the alcoholics confesses to his shame regarding his wish to be cured of his disease. Initially there’s some confusion about this, it appears momentarily that he’s ashamed … Continue reading →

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Jessie Cole’s Darkness on the Edge of Town

Posted on August 16, 2012 by rustichello

Darkness on the Edge of Town by Jessie Cole is a great little book. I really liked that in no way did it suggest that by reading it the book would change your life, or make you kinder, or improve … Continue reading →

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mirror, mirror

Posted on July 10, 2012 by rustichello

“…the ongoing transformation, courtesy of Facebook, of the verb to like from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse: from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice. And liking, in general, is commercial … Continue reading →

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(what becomes of) apostrophe fascists

Posted on July 4, 2012 by rustichello

A lot of what I do professionally is to find forms of words that make unpleasant-sounding things, sometimes cruel and brutal things sound like business as usual, or at least only benign variations to how we’ve always done things.  Reassurance … Continue reading →

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no going back: Game of Thrones

Posted on June 20, 2012 by rustichello

During the last eighteen months I’ve got into Game of Thrones, reading George Martin’s five or six novels (depending on your market location) and watching the HBO television series. I’ve had great fun with it, I find myself having lovely … Continue reading →

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cracks in the pavement

Posted on April 3, 2012 by rustichello

I have a thing about Edmund White. There’s a moment when you’re about nineteen or twenty and you read something and you know that that’s how you want to sound on the page, and then you spend years trying to … Continue reading →

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it’s what you do with it

Posted on March 1, 2011 by rustichello

For much of the last decade I have been in denial about literature. I have elided almost all aspects of my history and education that might make clear I’m an English major. And there! I’ve said it. The denial of … Continue reading →

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