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Bourgeois film: the phrase conjures a lost world of seething Communist weeklies, their back pages in thrall to the tidy metaphor of base and superstructure. But for much of cinema’s first century, “bourgeois film” was real enough: it could be said to exist because it had something to define itself …

While Leyner applied his talents elsewhere, literary history ground on. As Zadie Smith’s now-canonical argument goes, the standard-issue anglophone “lyrical realist” novel developed a severe case of neurosis in the years after September 11 and the endless war. As if it knew all too well that its ne…

even that book is charged with an antic intensity

Again, we proceeded to the hospital. This time she was admitted at seven centimeters, and the bitchy midwife’s shift had ended, hurrah. The new midwife was a rad old battle-axe. The gymnast wanted to be in the tub, so into the tub she went, and stayed. She had zero body hair. I tried not to let thi…

I showed my friend how to wrap her newborn securely onto her chest, and we ventured out on a slow walk around the block, her first trip outside the condo since returning from the hospital. There were blossoms on the trees and the sunlight was sweet. My friend seemed newly born herself. She looked a…