For an ancient art, the epic poem has experienced a long and slow near-demise. In preliterate times, the bardic storyteller traditionally served a variety of purposes: historian, entertainer, propagandist, even prophet—functions that bound a community together and offered a common
Interview
“Icons” are always more elastic than we think: An interview with Harold Jaffe
Robin Andreasen: Your work in crisis art or docufiction, including incisive discussions of serial killers, prisoners, artists (the piece on Van Gogh in Anti-Twitter still haunts me), suggests that it is primarily through dialogue and engagement with the most …
My belief is that we’re all face-talking: An interview with Eli Horowitz
Eli Horowitz—former editor and publisher of McSweeney’s—released a new book about a generation of children born without speech, The Silent History, as a serialized novel that came out daily on iOS devices (iPhone and iPad). It included e-specific features …
Melissa Malouf
The title of Melissa Malouf’s new novel, More Than You Know (Dalkey Archive Press, 2014), is more than the title of a classic Vincent Youmans’ song from the 1930s. It’s also a reflection on the perpetual state of mind of …
Francine Prose
I was late telephoning Francine Prose. Thrilled by (and not a little nervous about) our impending conversation, I forgot that New York operates one full hour ahead of New Orleans. Thus I returned home from the store to a missed …
Zachary Lazar: I Pity the Poor Immigrant
I’m waiting along Esplanade Avenue when Zachary Lazar motors up on his scooter. He unfastens his helmet, deploys a kick-stand, and after killing the engine uses the same key to open a compartment under the seat in which he stores …
Nancy Dixon: 200 Years of New Orleans Literature
Some authors in the anthology (clockwise, from top left): George Washington Cable, Leona Queyrouze, Sherwood Anderson, Richard Ford, Hamilton Basso, Fatima Shaik, Tom Dent
An ambitious new volume, N.O. Lit: 200 Years of New Orleans Literature, collects short …
Roxane Gay: Inhabited by the story
I am not entirely convinced that Roxane Gay is a single entity. I intend to find out at the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, where she will sit for panels and interviews on both Saturday and Sunday, March 22 and 23
David Armand: Harlow
David Armand was born and raised in Louisiana. He grew up in the small village of Folsom, where he lived on twenty-two acres of pine-wooded land with lots of dogs and a few horses. He has worked as a telephone …
Bill Cotter: I’m really only interested in the damaged and mishandled
Portrait by Leon Alesi
Bill Cotter’s new book, The Parallel Apartments, is a fascinating, harrowing, charming, and mortifying novel that spans decades and tracks a cast of nearly a dozen primary characters through wandering, interwoven escapades in Austin, Texas, …
