Author Archives: Colin Lubner

I remember reading The Great Gatsby as a junior in high school and finding it all a bit dull. Why it would be the first novel I read this year, then, in a year in which my goal is to read and pick apart one hundred novels, is something of a mystery to me. IContinue reading “January 2022”

On Jen Fawkes’s Mannequin and Wife The last thing I read this year, and probably my favorite bunch of stories. And so I sent my partner a photo of the last paragraph of the titular story to close it all out. Here’s the last sentence of this paragraph, which ranks among the best sentences ofContinue reading “Everything Else (December)”

Note: My goal at the beginning of this year was to get to a point where I could turn out, if need be, a piece of analysis or criticism or creative nonfiction I could be proud of in less than a day. In order to get to this point, I resolved to write a pieceContinue reading “Everything Else (November)”

On Emily Mortgenstern’s The Night Circus, Paul Cunningham’s The House of the Tree of Sores, and Josh Malerman’s Bird Box The first comparison that comes to mind to Emily Mortgenstern’s The Night Circus isn’t a favorable one. The only book in the past to be recommended to me as frequently (and fervently) as The NightContinue reading “October 20th”

On Brian Barker’s Vanishing Acts, Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, and E.M. Cioran’s All Gall Is Divided The more I write, the more I find myself distrustful of words. Take, for instance, the previous sentence, within which I might have easily substituted “distrusting” for “distrustful of.” Or “furious at” for that. Or “disappointedContinue reading “October 7th”

On Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, The Menzingers’ On the Impossible Past, and W.S. Merwin’s Migration I begin most of these reflections with a summary, no matter how brief. But Lolita is ubiquitous, and Migration spans fifty years of a career. Plot lies beside the point. What I want to talk about instead is the blasted territoryContinue reading “September 30th”

On Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Emil Cioran’s The Trouble with Being Born, and Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel The best storytellers, I find, surprise without appearing to try. I wrote last week of Sound of Metal, whose director and writer, Darius Marder, effortlessly avoids a minefield of genre clichés, thereby telling one ofContinue reading “September 20th”

On Daniel Borzutzky’s The Performance of Becoming Human and Daniel Marder’s Sound of Metal About a minute ago, I finished Marder’s 2019 Sound of Metal. The film, in case you ignored it (as did I) amidst 2020’s Oscar’s nonsense, centers upon a drummer, Ruben Stone (Riz Ahmed, in a career-ascending turn), who loses his hearing.Continue reading “September 9th”

On Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers and Thomas Ligotti’s The Conspiracy Against the Human Race For the second half of the first decade of my life, nothing terrified me quite like Stephen King’s It. I remember sitting in front of our family room’s TV when I was four or five, momentarily unattended, and watching a silver-eyedContinue reading “September 3rd”

On Eugene Thacker’s Infinite Resignation, Anne Carson’s If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road As I grow more confident of the things I want to say, I find I have less and less to say. In light of this loss, the appeal of aphorisms—the pessimist’s genre of choice—is obvious. “KnowledgeContinue reading “August 22nd”