Tag: Technology
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#1 (& a Recap): The Heartlands Best Reads of 2019
Suzannah Lessard’s The Absent Hand: Reimagining Our American Landscape is the perfect Heartlands read. In this collection of essays, the veteran writer and observer lays bare what we have done to the land in the shift to the digital age. Lessard’s writing is beautiful and her thesis is strong–whereas the created landscapes we live in have…
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Stirring, Terrifying, Inspiring, Troubling—Yeah, That’s America
The first thing I note about Jill Lepore’s new one-volume history of the United States is how out of style it is. In an age of disintegrating consensus and competing truths, who would dare to attempt a comprehensive narrative of our national story? Fortunately, Jill Lepore would and the result is a book you’ll surely…
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Why Don’t Country People Just Get Out? – Episode 3
It’s happened again. Writers in The New York Times are once again wondering aloud if country people shouldn’t just give up and move to the city to deal with problems of economic insecurity. Which means, it’s time for another episode of “Why Don’t Country People Just Get Out?” In an article titled “The Hard Truth…
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The Destabilizing Doors of Exit West: A Review
Reading Mohsin Hamid’s acclaimed new novel, Exit West, as a window on the current global migration crisis is a mistake. The world imagined by the Pakistani-born Hamid is not one facing a migration issue – migration is the environment in which all its characters swim. It’s not a problem to be addressed; it is in…
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Attention Must Be Paid: Writing Young People Into My Life
How do you write about the activities of people who don’t act in ways you can see? I’m spending this month in West Texas writing a novel that has, as a main character, a 16-year-old boy. Of all the characters in the book, this was supposed to be the easy one, since he’s loosely based…
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