Arcade

Literature

18 posts

All Caught Up in the Infinite Middle

Tia Glista unravels the Möbius strip of narrative in Catherine Lacey’s latest book—a hybrid of memoir and fiction, about a recent break-up and an earlier loss of faith—and reflects on her own break with God, and what faith means in the first place.
by Tia Glista /

The Boring Kind of Heartbreak

In No Fault, Haley Mlotek searches for the language of love’s quiet undoing—from grief to the unexpected grace that comes with choosing to leave a marriage. Patrick Pittman traces what happens when cultural expectations, legal reform, and literary form converge in the finality of divorce.
by Patrick Pittman /

The Art of Quitting

Maybe true artistic freedom isn’t about about perseverance, but knowing exactly when to stop. Jowita Bydlowska reflects on the decision by her mentor and friend Barbara Gowdy to quit writing.
by Jowita Bydlowska /

Til Freedom Do Us Part

When it comes to 20th century intellectual power-couples, no two represented more disparate ideas about marriage and freedom than the chain-smoking liberationists Sartre and de Beauvoir on the one hand, and the neoliberal economists Milton and Rose Friedman on the other.
by Linda Besner /

Order and the Stable Self

What’s the meaning of a sentence? A paragraph? Linda Besner considers the abecedarian work that makes Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries so much more than an exercise in spreadsheet manipulation.
by Linda Besner /