Category Archives: Books

John Updike, Terrorist

By Steen | November 15, 2006

Updike’s new novel comes five years after 9/11 and takes those events as the starting points for a discussion of what fanaticism and terrorism mean. Rather than looking at terrorists as coming from outside the US, he investigates how domestic terrorists might think and why they would hate US culture and society. It is an [...]

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Kathryn Kramer, A Handbook for Visitors from Outer Space

By Steen | June 21, 2006

A piece from my dissertation, I’m briefly discussing representational issues in Kathryn Kramer’s A Handbook for Visitors from Outer Space. I’m trying to establish its connection the the slipstream “movement” as Bruce Sterling began defining.

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Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

By Steen | November 11, 2005

Bret Easton Ellis’ new novel Lunar Park is an unusual departure from his typical style. While the themes remain much the same (alienation and anxiety in a commodified, fragmented, senseless world), this novel takes on a quite different resonance from his earlier works by bringing in a different main charater; Bret Easton Ellis ‘himself.’ Much [...]

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Michael Cunningham, Specimen Days

By Steen | October 9, 2005

Michael Cunningham’s fourth novel, Specimen Days follows in the vein of The Hours in having a very specific and concrete connection to another author’s work. In this case it is Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass in particular, though the title of Cunningham’s novel comes from another Whitman work of the same name. Cunningham’s [...]

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Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

By Steen |

No wonder that Heinlein is regarded as one of the premiere sf writers and why practically all who discuss sf poetics have to at least mention Heinlein briefly. His ability to create other worlds through language is quite impressive, especially since it always seems so easy and logical. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is [...]

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