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by Woody Brown Review of Find Me by Laura van den Berg (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). Originally published in The Public (March 11, 2015). Let’s talk about young adult literature. For many years, YA was a pejorative label that was used unfairly to refer to novels that were supposedly light on substance, relatively easy, or otherwise kid-sized. Many readers reject YA out of hand as less serious or somehow not worth reading. Almost everyone, however, can recall a favorite

by Woody Brown Review of The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (Sceptre, 2014). Originally published in The Rumpus (September 8, 2014). There is, I think, a transactional element inherent in fiction. A reader will only buy a certain amount of clumsy explanation before she needs something in return, something else to compel her attention, something like a plot or a convincing relationship. Without the drama of the human experience, the reader is left holding pages of rules and re

by Woody Brown Review of On Immunity by Eula Biss (Graywolf Press, 2014). Originally published in The Public as "Illness as Metaphor" (December 23, 2014). “The British call it a ‘jab,’ and Americans, favoring guns, call it a ‘shot,’” Eula Biss writes in On Immunity: An Inoculation , her widely praised, deeply necessary book on vaccination and illness. “Either way, vaccination is a violence.” Observations like this, which are a product of the author’s uniquely inquisitive, h

by Woody Brown Review of Man V. Nature by Diane Cook (Harper Perennial, 2015). Originally published in The Rumpus (November 27, 2014). A woman, Linda, returns from the hospital with her newborn baby, Beatrice. As she and her husband pull into the driveway, they see a man waiting in their backyard, “skulking behind the maple.” Linda hurries inside the house hugging Beatrice to her chest as her husband tries to scare the man away. “Inside, she watched the man in the yard wa

by Woody Brown Review of Sweetland by Michael Crummey (Liveright, 2015). Originally published in The Public (February 3, 2015). The Fog Warning , 1885, by Winslow Homer. In one of the many eerie recollections in Sweetland , the fourth novel from Michael Crummey, Moses Sweetland helps wildlife officers transport two dozen bison onto the tiny island that bears his family’s name. The goal was to determine if there was any disease risk to the local wildlife, after which the ani

by Woody Brown Review of J. Michelle Coghlan's Sensational Internationalism: The Paris Commune and the Remapping of American Memory in the Long Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh University Press, 2016). Originally published in The Wenshan Review vol. 11.2, June 2018. The failure of Western neoliberalism has had many deleterious effects, of which perhaps the most terrifying has been the resurgence of fascism, ethnonationalism, chauvinism, and other hateful facets of the extreme ri

by Woody Brown The following is a paper I gave at the 48th meeting of the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) in 2017. The project has its roots in disability studies research I conducted at the University at Buffalo, and specifically in courses I took with Prof. Joseph Valente on representations of autism and representations of disability in modernist literature. “A simple assumption motivates this study: everyone has to be somewhere.”  – Disability Historian Susan

Interview with Michael Joyce about his novel Foucault, in Winter, in the Linnaeus Garden (Starcherone, 2015). Originally published in The Public  (April 10, 2015) . Michel Foucault's work, including seminal texts like Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality , lays bare the dynamics of power that operate through seemingly innocuous social institutions and situates them in the larger relationship between knowledge, control, and transgression. His work was not limited

Review of Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín . Originally published in The Public (November 10, 2014). The notes in an Irish air are long and mournful, often solitary against a backdrop of irregular silences and a wailing drone. They howl across the bowed lines of the musical staff and take their time to do it, wandering up and down the pentatonic scale before returning to a grieving refrain. The only rhythm that guides their progress is the tide of loss. We could say, then, that

Interview with Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian about their work on death row and In This Timeless Time: Living and Dying on Death Row in America (University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Originally published in Artvoice (June 21, 2012) . Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian revisit their work on Death Row with In This Timeless Time Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian are two of Buffalo’s most active scholars, writers, and filmmakers. Their curricula vitae might be called impre

Review of Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014); originally published in The Public (December 3, 2014) . J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of, among other things,  The Hobbit  and  The Lord of the Rings  trilogy, is a writer of almost mythic stature, and rightfully so. His fiction essentially founded what is now known as high fantasy—the sort of fantasy literature that does not simply discuss Frod

Published in A Companion to World Literature (Wiley-Blackwell, 2019) ( https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118635193.ctwl0319 ).