Eric Scheske

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Literature

Literature

“The novel’s spirit is the spirit of complexity. The novelist says to the reader: things are not as simple as you think.” Milan Kundera It thereby is a rebuke to the left hemisphere and its preference for neat, predictable, and efficient abstraction. Reading is also frustratingly aimless and, to the left hemisphere's way of stilted thinking, a waste of time.

Bawdy Premodern and Postmodern

Bawdy Premodern and Postmodern

RabelaisOne of my favorite writers, Albert Jay Nock, was a huge Rabelais fan. He wrote two books about him. From the first: It must be laid down once and for all, that the chief purpose of reading a classic like Rabelais is to prop and stay the spirit, especially inThe

Fine Drunken Literature Returns

Fine Drunken Literature Returns

Dopamine flooded my brain and I immediately wanted gin to fill my veins: An email announced a new issue of Modern Drunkard Magazine had dropped. My immediate reaction, "It's not dead!" "Will I get a hard copy in the mail?" "How many of

Pixel v. Print and Five Hard Novels

Pixel v. Print and Five Hard Novels

I ran across perhaps the most-enjoyable Medium.com pieces of the past few months: Five Insanely Difficult Novels (and Why They're Worth the Effort). It, for me, is perhaps the quintessential online essay. I agree with Joseph Epstein that there is something fundamentally different between reading print and

Famous Amos

Famous Amos

Kyle Smith at The New Criterion

Jon Fosse's Fiction

Jon Fosse's Fiction

Jonathan Geltner at Close Reading

How to Re-Read

How to Re-Read

Joseph Epstein at The Lamp

What Was Literary Fiction?

What Was Literary Fiction?

Dan Sinykin at The Nation

In Defense of Voracious Reading

In Defense of Voracious Reading

Philip Bunn at Law & Liberty

Middlebrow Writing

Middlebrow Writing

There used to be writing that was "middlebrow." You'd find it in urbane and smart publications that were lower than academia and fine writing (highbrow) and higher than sports columnists and dimestore novels (lowbrow). It was always a limited market. When Henry Fowler self-published his own

The Novel, Who Needs It? by Joseph Epstein

The Novel, Who Needs It? by Joseph Epstein

Steve Donoghue at Open Letters Review