The Critical Fate of the Major Novel

Posted on September 30, 2015
Image: Cover detail of Purity by Jonathan Franzen.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; even smaller minds complain about the rest of these people.

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Nature Writing Gets Personal

Posted on September 23, 2015
Image: Cover detail from H Is for Hawk, the 2014 memoir by Helen Macdonald.

After situating themselves in a “wild” context, both women do what the entire history of nature writing has implicitly instructed them not to do: they bring their emotional backpacks into the landscape.

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