the magical is only a kind of scrim
Yet while The Great Gatsby or A Separate Peace or On the Road—these bro-love tales of masculine exceptionalism—suggest to us that bright-burning human fireworks like this might actually exist somewhere, Ferrante's brilliant friend[s] show[s] us the opposite. Rather, I wonder if Ferrante's point is …
a portrait limned by the convergences of language and the divergences of class
I devoured these books the first time, the way I remember devouring books as a kid, the way Lila does, according to Lend. It was that old feeling, the excitement of having a mind to which another mind is speaking from the page. Rereading them has been remarkably slow—and not just because Sarah enco…
Friendship and reading take time, but I tend to be pushy with both. I'm a voracious, perhaps violent reader of novels, and a voracious (hopefully not violent) cultivator of new friendships; I blaze through books in single sittings and similarly crave those day-into-night, coffee-into-beer conversat…
