Literary Criticism

Our longtime book reviewer offers several page-turning tips for the beach, the lake, the sofa, the hammock, the cool, well-lit spot by the air-conditioner, etc.

From Tom Piazza -- whose books include the novels "A Free State" and "City of Refuge" -- comes a new work of fiction set at a writer's conference attended by Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, and others.

A peer-reviewed academic journal dating back to the early 1960s, the JJQ offers critical and theoretical work focusing on the life, writing, reception, and influence of James Joyce.

Rekdal's multimedia piece, "West: A Translation" -- which she'll read from here on campus -- employs translations, archival research, essays, poems, videos, and images in order to document the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay, where many Chinese migrants were detained after the implementation of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.

Our longtime book reviewer makes some page-turning suggestions for book lovers of all sorts -- and for those who might be shopping for book lovers.

"[Hamid] reminds us yet again that fiction sometimes provides the most direct path to truth." -- BookPage (starred review)

"Joan Didion: What She Means" is an art exhibition now on view at UCLA's Hammer Museum; it renders the great writer's life and work through the creations of nearly 50 artists, including Betye Saar, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Maren Hassinger, and Ed Ruscha.

Museum Confidential: Season 7, Episode 5.

"[Hamid] reminds us yet again that fiction sometimes provides the most direct path to truth." -- BookPage (starred review)

"Nafisi...has a talent for combining the academic and the everyday, the theoretical and the personal, and thanks to her deliberate and confident voice, the lessons [in this book] will stick with us, too." -- The New York Times Book Review