the author has always written close to the bone, and Letters from Buenos Aires sharpens that instinct into something approaching grace.
An issue from the Hudson archive — essays, verse, and review of the season's most necessary books.
Plot, in the conventional sense, is almost beside the point. What propels the pages is closer to attention — the writer's, then ours — turning over the ordinary until it gives up its odd, persistent light.
A Question of Form
Plot, in the conventional sense, is almost beside the point. What propels the pages is closer to attention — the writer's, then ours — turning over the ordinary until it gives up its odd, persistent light.
“The book does not ask to be admired. It asks to be lived with.”
The prose moves like weather. Sentences gather, break, gather again. What looks at first like restraint is, on closer reading, a kind of generosity — the writer trusting the reader to feel the storm without being shown the lightning.
The prose moves like weather. Sentences gather, break, gather again. What looks at first like restraint is, on closer reading, a kind of generosity — the writer trusting the reader to feel the storm without being shown the lightning.
Listening to the Margins
The prose moves like weather. Sentences gather, break, gather again. What looks at first like restraint is, on closer reading, a kind of generosity — the writer trusting the reader to feel the storm without being shown the lightning.
By the time the final chapter arrives, the author has earned every quiet thing the book attempts. Few writers working today are doing so with this much patience, or this little vanity.
