On plagiarism and our response to conflicts between writers. — Writers on Twitter have been captivated—some, outraged—by an article published in The New York Times Magazine this past Tuesday on the drama between two fiction writers, Dawn Dorland and Sonya Larson. …

On Clarice Lispector’s 1977 masterpiece, “The Hour of the Star.” — This isn’t a novel you read just once. It’s a novel of ideas, of linguistic and narrative games, of intense poverty and richness, of misogyny and misanthropy, and of love. The plot of Clarice Lispector’s 1977 novel, The Hour of the Star (translated from Portuguese by G. Pontiero in 1992…

Exploring the genre of “zuihitsu” and what it reveals about life writing. — You can watch the video version of this essay here. In his 2010 book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, David Shields argues that contemporary literature should embrace hybrid genres of writing, blur the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, and liberate plagiarism from cultural stigma. …

And what shame taught me about writing and work. — As a medical student, I frequently told a lie that I had wanted to pursue medicine after being inspired by the written works of Dr. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist. The truth was that reading Dr. Sacks made me want to be a writer, not a doctor. The lie went like…

How poet Heather Christle’s book of tears helped me navigate grief. — When Andrew died, I cried, and cried, and cried. I cried every day for weeks, then months. I cried lying in bed, walking in the park, on the hospital floor. It has been over two years. The only difference now is that the tears are unexpected, irregular. No one can…

Reflecting on her eleven novels, and what they taught me about reading. — Toni Morrison wrote and published 11 novels during her lifetime. I have read and ranked all of them so that you know where to start. Before I go on, it’s important to emphasize that this list was made completely based on my personal preferences. This is deeply influenced by the…

Analyzing Nathaniel West’s masterpiece and our collective, existential nightmare. — In 1931, in the throes of the Great Depression and at the conclusion of the Jazz Age, Nathanael West wrote Miss Lonelyhearts, his “remorseless masterpiece.” (1) To some critics, West’s novel surpasses well-known literary classics, like The Great Gatsby and Sanctuary, in “forming a lucid indictment of the failure of…

Exploring faith and doubt in Matthew Arnold’s timeless stanzas. — In Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” the timeless conflict between land and sea represents not only Arnold’s individual melancholy over the decline of faith but also the larger human condition: an inability to compromise the transient illusions of imagination with the “grating roar” (l. 9) of reality. This unresolvable duality manifests…

On theology, and criticizing biblical language. — In Literature and Dogma, Matthew Arnold contends that words in religious texts can have ambiguous, “literary” interpretations or factual, “scientific” ones. His analysis serves to undermine theologians who assign unnecessarily precise definitions to biblical language. Arnold’s rhetoric Arnold uses three rhetorical appeals, logos, ethos, and pathos to support his position against 19th-century…