The Mother Of Enemy Slayer
A young soldier returns to Arizona from Iraq, tormented by nightmares... read more
An Online Treehouse For Literary Monkeys
If you set up a million monkeys with a bunch of laptops, would they eventually produce Shakespeare? Maybe not... read more
The Past Lives of Laura Marling
Anti-ingénue Laura Marling seems to embody weathered spirits in her spindly 18-year-old frame. The alt-folk singer/songwriter is quickly becoming the U.K.’s new darling—and she finds the wise-beyond-her-years accolades a bit silly... read more
From Airport Hell: A High Flying Novel
No one ever had more carry-on baggage than Bennie Ford, the narrator of Jonathan Miles’ sparkling debut novel, Dear American Airlines. Enough, it turns out, to fill a book. Immured in Chicago’s O’Hare airport en route to his long-estranged daughter’s wedding... read more
The Unscientific Method
Fresh out of med school, Rivka Galchen made an odd move for a newly christened M.D.... read more
Catching Up With... Adrian Tomine
Gradually gaining notice for his series of comics Optic Nerve, Adrian Tomine's first long-form graphic novel, Shortcomings, will be published on October 2. Tomine told Paste about working on record covers, the difficulty of writing a graphic novel and addressing race in his comics... read more
Them's Fightin' Words
I spent 14 months in I Corps, Vietnam, as a conscientious objector... read more
International Comics
Reading a translated work often involves figuring out where the author is coming from. Why do the characters behave the way they do? Is it a French thing?... read more
Female Characters in Comics
Every Thursday—New Comics Day—dozens of guys filed in to pick up titles from Marvel and DC, peruse the independent offerings... read more
Frank Miller
Historically, DC Comics had offered the traditional heroes of childhood legend, but Miller’s re-imagining of Batman danced along the fine line... read more
The Shojo Must Go On
Here’s my dilemma: While browsing Borders for manga (Japanese comics), do I act my 31 years, pretending to shop for a nonexistent niece or nephew... read more
New Century Coolbooks
Out of the dark night, a hero emerges to save the faltering rhythms of pop cache! A hero uniquely suited to the needs of a populace... read more
Signs of Life 2004
By the time you read this, you’ll have seen manifold annual Best-of book lists in other magazines and newspapers... read more
Tom Perrotta's Suburban Distopia
Short, with graying hair and an athletic build, Tom Perrotta enters a Starbucks in Belmont, the Boston suburb... read more
Standing By Words
It seems odd that a heavyweight writer like Joyce Carol Oates would republish her early novel A Garden of Earthly Delights... read more
Birth of a Nation
Like Huey Freeman, the central character in his Boondocks comic strip, Aaron McGruder is somewhat contrarian... read more
George Pelecanos' Capitol City Soul
Washington, D.C., was a tense place to be in 1968. White suburbanites generally viewed “the District line” as a sort of Berlin Wall... read more
Standing By Words
Nature writing—it’s a specialty genre, one assumes, as the national parks are “special” places, and ecologically sensible habits... read more
Beijing Doll
And you thought your adolescence was rocky. Chun Sue’s was deemed too hot to handle by her own government... read more
Standing By Words
“I seem incapable of writing a story in which people do not babble philosophically,” the late John Gardner once joked... read more
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