Calvino’s Cosmicomics: Time and the Hunter (or t zero)

To me, there’s virtually no doubt that Italo Calvino is a literary genius. Each one of his works create either Continue reading →

Creating a Character, 2: Bernard Malamud and J.G. Ballard

The question remains: How does a skilled writer establish a good character in so few pages? And how does it relate to their overall style and composition?

Hemingway and Modernity’s Necropolis

The works of Ernest Hemingway have always aimed to elucidate the looming presence of death as it follows his characters Continue reading →

Simulacrum in Literature: Baudrillard and Barthelme

Simulacrum, like many terms surrounding postmodernism, has been defined in a number of ways. Perhaps the simplest definition of the Continue reading →

Time-Tearing with Philip K. Dick

I like Philip K. Dick. His ideas are intriguing and his writing is more than passable by my standards. I Continue reading →

Creating a Character: Carver and Cheever

The short story, the ever neglected cousin of the novel, requires many of the same techniques used in the composition Continue reading →

Philip K. Dick’s Martian Time-Slip and Pragmatic Knowledge

Philip K. Dick is, without a doubt, one of the most interesting writers of the 20th century. His prose is Continue reading →

Borges and Murakami: Philosophy in Fiction

Borges and Murakami Philosophy in fiction has had a long and storied history, from the mythology of Ancient Greece to Continue reading →

Borges and the Book of Infinity

If the Library of Babel is a library that is all libraries, then what if there was a book that is all books? What if, in the pages of a book, one could find infinity itself?

Borges and Calvino: Invisible Cities and Dreams

  …Marco’s answers and objections took their place in a discourse already proceeding on its own, in the Great Khan’s Continue reading →

When Fiction Lives In Fiction

Fantastic Borges essay on the history of meta-fiction and its role in literature. After a thorough search of Google I couldn’t Continue reading →

Borges’ Dreamtigers

  A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with images Continue reading →

Paranoia in Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly

paranoia /ˌparəˈnɔɪə/ noun a mental condition characterized by delusions of persecution, unwarranted jealousy, or exaggerated self-importance, typically worked into an Continue reading →

Proletarianization in E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops

‘cannot you see […] that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really Continue reading →