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Love can be both intoxicating and toxic. One desires to be taken over: enveloped, dissolved, decomposed, and one desires just as strongly to retain an individual shape. For this reason, Anne Carson describes erotic love as fundamentally ambivalent in her 1986 book, Eros the Bittersweet. As she puts…

The story of person-becoming-plant is not about reversal or reversion to some imagined natural state. Instead it provides a counterpoint to any quick-fix, back-to-the-land fantasy, which sees nature as distinct, permanent, unchanging, passive, authentic, and fundamentally good. The idea is not that…

One ambitious attempt to undo the individual-moral-adventure story was the postmodern systems novel, which intended to depict entire political, social, and technological systems by zooming in and out on figure and ground. The concept was introduced in the late eighties by the critic Tom LeClair, wh…

“Things happen, people change,” is what Amanda said. For her that covered it. You wanted an explanation, an ending that would assign blame and dish up justice. You considered violence and you considered reconciliation. But what you are left with is a premonition of the way your life will fade behin…

It is a warm, humid afternoon. Spring, apparently. Late April or early May. Amanda left in January. There was snow on the ground the morning she called, a whiteness that turned gray and filthy by noon and then disappeared down the sewer grates. Later that morning the florist called about the bouque…