On translating Marcelo Cohen
Through translation, inventive turns of phrase and expanded linguistic boundaries imbed themselves in our cultural consciousness like the very stories they tell, and it is from these mutations that… More
On James Joyce’s Ulysses
Until I graduated from college—and had to find a job, get my heart broken, bear the burden of being a twenty-something during recession, watch friends go to rehab, watch… More
On Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War
The Chocolate War (along with its sequel) has been consistently challenged and criticized by schools, libraries, and parents for its language, sexual content, violence, and bleak message. At the… More
On John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men
The story is a tragedy predicated on the idea that working one’s fingers to the bone for little pay and no security is fundamentally corrupt. It’s a tragedy about… More
On J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye
What Salinger gave to us were memorable meeting points between innocence and the world’s soiling stains. There was so much authenticity in his stance and sympathy that his artificialities… More
On Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
You could make a case for a kind of parallel between the events of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and the fact of it being challenged in Alabama schools for… More
Censorship and Writing for Young Adults
I write for children and teenagers—this is my perspective on censorship from within the world of kids’ books. More
On translating Dagmara Kraus
Dagmara Kraus’s debut poetry collection, kummerang, is an exuberant investigation of a linguistically charged mind. The poems in kummerangrefuse to decide whether they will speak through sense or music,… More
Excerpts from Qiu Miaojin’s Notes of a Crocodile
She had sought me out. I knew it would happen. Even if I had switched to a different section, she would have sought me out all the same. She,… More
On translating Qiu Miaojin
What makes Kerouac or Salinger timeless is not necessarily literary, but perhaps didactic: the fact that there is wisdom to be found at the fountain of youth, no matter… More
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