#plotless-narratives

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fromThe New Yorker
3 hours ago

In Film, Sometimes the Greatest Drama Is Offscreen

"Cinematic Immunity" offers a workers'-eye view of Hollywood on the Hudson, revealing the intricate dynamics of filmmaking in New York City from 1954 to 9/11.
Independent films
Film
fromOpen Culture
13 hours ago

Watch 434 Avant-Garde and Surreal Short Films Online: Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Luis Bunuel and Many More

Hollywood faces a crisis with declining interest in films, prompting a search for re-enchantment through experimental cinema.
#literature
fromThe Atlantic
2 days ago
Books

Unconventional Novels About Conventional People

Aging revolutionaries and conformists share parallel narratives of disillusionment and the loss of youthful dreams in recent literature.
Books
fromThe Atlantic
2 days ago

Unconventional Novels About Conventional People

Aging revolutionaries and conformists share parallel narratives of disillusionment and the loss of youthful dreams in recent literature.
Writing
fromThe New Yorker
1 day ago

He Wrote a Book About Interviewing. Here's His Interview.

Ben Lerner's 'Transcription' explores memory, language, and technology through the lens of a writer's relationship with his mentor.
Television
fromThe Atlantic
4 days ago

TV's Failing Cure For Middle-Aged Malaise

Imperfect Women exemplifies the decline of the 'messy-mom thriller' genre despite initial viewership success.
Mindfulness
fromPsychology Today
5 days ago

Should You 'Rage Against the Dying of the Light'?

Fighting against death can be noble but may lead to futility and emotional strain, while acceptance offers liberation and wisdom.
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 week ago

Daunting, inspiring, comforting, terrifying: the writers who can make silence as eloquent as words

A vision lay before him: Fleet Street blanketed with snow, silent, empty, pure white, and, at the end of it, the huge and majestic form of Saint Paul's Cathedral. It was a spellbinding moment: the great thoroughfare temporarily devoid of carts and carriages, the cathedral looming blurrily out of the still-falling snowflakes a real-life snow globe.
London
Writing
fromVulture
2 days ago

Camus's The Stranger, It Turns Out, Is Still Relevant

The adaptation of The Stranger emphasizes Meursault's passive nature and the racial implications of his actions, adding depth to the original narrative.
Film
fromVulture
2 days ago

The Twist in The Drama Is Not the Problem

The film features a controversial plot twist involving a character's past plan for a school shooting, sparking significant online speculation and backlash.
fromOregon ArtsWatch * Arts & Culture News
4 days ago

FilmWatch Weekly: Camus' 'The Stranger' on screen, Christian Petzold's 'Miroirs No. 3,' and more * Oregon ArtsWatch

François Ozon's adaptation of The Stranger, while visually stunning, reveals the limitations of cinema in depicting the complex inner states of consciousness that Camus masterfully crafted in his text.
Writing
#reading-memories
Books
fromwww.theguardian.com
3 days ago

Sarah Hall: Everyone wangs on about Anna Karenina I've never been able to finish it'

Early reading experiences shaped a love for literature and inspired a desire to write, highlighting the impact of strong female characters and diverse narratives.
Books
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 week ago

Benjamin Wood: John Fowles's The Magus was so frustrating I threw it at the wall'

Reading experiences shape personal growth and inspire creativity in writing.
Books
fromwww.theguardian.com
3 days ago

Sarah Hall: Everyone wangs on about Anna Karenina I've never been able to finish it'

Early reading experiences shaped a love for literature and inspired a desire to write, highlighting the impact of strong female characters and diverse narratives.
Books
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 week ago

Benjamin Wood: John Fowles's The Magus was so frustrating I threw it at the wall'

Reading experiences shape personal growth and inspire creativity in writing.
#horror
Independent films
fromVulture
1 week ago

Sure, They Will Kill You, But Can They Get On With It Already?

They Will Kill You satirizes rich Devil worshippers while contrasting them with the mundane lives of actual Satanists, challenging stereotypes and societal fears.
Independent films
fromVulture
1 week ago

Sure, They Will Kill You, But Can They Get On With It Already?

They Will Kill You satirizes rich Devil worshippers while contrasting them with the mundane lives of actual Satanists, challenging stereotypes and societal fears.
Books
fromThe New Yorker
5 days ago

The Sci-Fi Novelist Who Disappeared for Decades

Cameron Reed's science fiction explores cognitive estrangement, revealing alien worlds that reflect and challenge our own societal norms and moral dilemmas.
Artificial intelligence
fromThe Atlantic
2 weeks ago

The Human Skill That Eludes AI

Generative AI has paradoxically declined in creative writing quality since GPT-2, despite advancing in technical capabilities, with current models producing formulaic, flawed prose despite access to centuries of literature.
#film-vs-literature
Writing
fromwww.theguardian.com
6 days ago

Transcription by Ben Lerner review a stunning exploration of technology and storytelling

The novel explores themes of touch, familial inheritance, and the complexities of communication through a narrative involving a final interview with a mentor.
Women
fromThe New Yorker
3 weeks ago

The Feminist Visionary Who Lost the Plot

Elizabeth Cady Stanton's experience of discrimination at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention catalyzed her feminist activism, though her sense of intellectual superiority later contributed to bigoted views.
Psychology
fromPsychology Today
3 weeks ago

The Shift That Happens When You Write a Non-Fiction Book

Writing a book transforms tacit knowledge into explicit frameworks, forcing experts to articulate intuitions they've developed through experience into clear, communicable ideas.
fromThe Verge
4 weeks ago

What we're listening to, watching, and reading right now.

Whether it's a slept-on post-punk album from the '80s, a new sci-fi novel, or a cult classic horror movie, we're always finding new obsessions here at The Verge - and we want to share those obsessions with you. Sometimes that might be a new release, but often it's going to be something a little older, something not necessarily plastered all over TikTok or sitting at the top of the charts on Spotify.
Music production
Philosophy
fromBig Think
3 weeks ago

The 3 types of reading (and the 2 you'll pick)

Reading exists on a spectrum from scanning to deep engagement, with most digital readers employing surface-level scanning that misses textual depth and nuance.
Arts
fromwww.npr.org
1 month ago

Mundane, magic, maybe both a new book explores 'The Writer's Room'

Writer's rooms and homes serve as cultural spaces that inspire visitors seeking connection to literary legacies, though the experience varies between magical and disappointing depending on accessibility and personal connection.
Books
fromPsychology Today
1 week ago

Fiction Is Indispensable to Life's Journey

Fiction is essential for emotional connection, learning, and social cognition, allowing us to escape reality and engage deeply with narratives.
Writing
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 week ago

Permanence by Sophie Mackintosh review high-concept adultery fable

Sophie Mackintosh's novel Permanence explores desire and infidelity through a surreal narrative of a couple trapped in a fantasy world.
Film
fromenglish.elpais.com
3 weeks ago

Insult or adaptation? Why films still struggle to adapt novels

Film adaptations of literature often transform source material through cinematic techniques, sometimes sacrificing literary depth for visual spectacle and narrative restructuring.
Miscellaneous
fromenglish.elpais.com
1 month ago

Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Nobel Prize laureate in Literature: My Hungary is that of language, not of hussars'

László Krasznahorkai rejects symbolic interpretation of his work, insisting his literature contains no symbols, parables, or hidden meanings despite critical attempts to decode them.
Books
fromThe New Yorker
3 weeks ago

Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Two literary works explore complex themes through innovative narrative techniques: Morrison's essays examine challenging craft elements in Toni Morrison's writing, while Nganang's memoir uses the scale as a metaphor connecting personal experience to colonial history.
Writing
fromwww.theguardian.com
3 weeks ago

Light and Thread by Han Kang review a tantalising book of reflections

Han Kang's Nobel Prize-winning work explores historical trauma and human fragility through poetic prose that balances outward examination of events like the Gwangju massacre with inward psychological portrayal, leaving interpretive gaps for readers.
Relationships
fromThe New Yorker
1 month ago

Mary Gaitskill on Damage and Defiance

Economic necessity, urban conditions, and contradictory cultural messages pushed many women into sex work, with choice constrained by coercion or gradual entrapment.
Writing
fromBig Think
3 weeks ago

"If it sounds literary, it isn't": The deceptively simple rules behind good writing

Neal Allen and Anne Lamott co-authored Good Writing by combining Allen's 36 writing rules with Lamott's annotations, creating a collaborative guide where Allen explains rules and Lamott provides practical examples and alternative perspectives.
Books
fromThe Atlantic
4 weeks ago

Books Are Meant to Be Slow

The slowness of reading books is a virtue, not a weakness, offering contemplative depth that digital media cannot replicate.
Film
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

People feel like they're in on the joke': the new wave of pseudo-biopics

Filmmakers increasingly create pseudo-biopics that borrow recognizable elements from real people and events while changing names and details to avoid legal liability and maintain creative freedom.
fromDefector
1 month ago

Yoko Tawada Is A Genius In Any Language | Defector

The best argument I can make for why I like reading fiction in translation is because it facilitates the psychedelic experience of encountering someone else's subjectivity twice over. The translator must act as a prismatic filter, faithfully attempting the impossible task of replicating someone else's experiences and ideas. To read in translation is to read two stories in harmony with each other: The one the author wants to tell and the one the translator has brought into your linguistic world.
Writing
fromPolygon
8 months ago

Time Flies when you're thinking about dying

So long as I manage to avoid lightbulbs or stay out of wine glasses, the buzzing will inevitably give way to silence. My wings will abruptly stop flapping and I'll careen towards the ground like an asteroid. I'll become a speck on a rug, a bit of debris absent-mindedly vacuumed up by someone who has no idea what adventures I've been on in the past minute.
Video games
Writing
fromPsychology Today
1 month ago

Virginia Woolf and the Reclaiming of Attention

Virginia Woolf's stream-of-consciousness technique demonstrates how attention shapes consciousness and remains relevant to contemporary struggles against digital distraction.
Books
fromThe Atlantic
1 month ago

How to Put Sex in a Novel

Contemporary literary fiction increasingly avoids depicting heterosexual intimacy while queer novelists freely explore sex's complexities, as exemplified by Jan Saenz's unconventional novel about selling experimental orgasm-inducing pills.
Books
fromThe Atlantic
1 month ago

When Did Literature Get Less Dirty?

Philip Roth's Zuckerman Unbound functioned as a response to the controversial reception of Portnoy's Complaint, with Roth's protagonist expressing regret over writing sexually explicit material that drew accusations of anti-Semitism and misogyny.
Philosophy
fromPsychology Today
2 months ago

How Did Meaning Emerge in a Meaningless Universe?

Meaning arises when physical correlations acquire evolutionary significance in living systems, grounding aboutness in biological value, neural representations, social symbols, and cultural narratives.
Books
fromThe Nation
1 month ago

Has Contemporary Fiction Ignored the Working Class?

Work's grip on life demands vigilance; allowing career to consume identity risks losing oneself entirely to labor's demands.
Philosophy
fromAeon
2 months ago

When we turned time into a line, we reimagined past and future | Aeon Essays

The modern linear conception of time arose in the 18th century; earlier Western thought conceived time as cyclical, tied to celestial cycles and eternal recurrence.
Film
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

"Dead Man's Wire" Is a Tangle of Loose Threads

A DJ's improvised on-air intervention and a TV reporter's determination highlight media influence and legal, law-enforcement complexities, though broader ambitions remain underdeveloped.
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

As If by Isabel Waidner review surreal doppelganger story

As the trophy takes the form of an elusive UFO, Corey Fah an outsider unfamiliar with the baffling inner workings of the system is unable to collect or even confirm the award. Waidner has said that the novel was partly inspired by the experience of winning the Goldsmiths prize for their previous work Sterling Karat Gold, and by the ephemeral nature of success, with its unfamiliar contexts of social power and opportunity.
Books
Books
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Georgi Gospodinov: Jorge Luis Borges gave me an exhilarating sense of freedom'

Early reading fostered a lifelong devotion to books and writing, shaped by adventure, criminology, eroticism, Salinger, Borges, and Bulgarian poets.
Writing
fromThe Atlantic
2 months ago

Taking the Internet Novel Offline

Depicting internet-mediated life requires new narrative strategies that ground online behavior in familiar forms like family drama to keep readers engaged.
Books
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

How Do You Write About the Inexplicable?

Rational skepticism coexists with a persistent tendency to personify evil and read coincidences as omens.
Writing
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

Joseph O'Neill on Why a Story Should Be Like a Poem

People conceal shameful deeds and also quietly perform unrecognized good acts; withholding specifics preserves mystery and influences how others perceive moral character.
Writing
fromOpen Culture
2 months ago

Hear James Joyce Reads From Ulysses and Finnegans Wake In His Only Two Recordings (1924/1929)

Ulysses examines Dublin and language, portraying words as two-faced with immediate meaning and historical, mythic resonances within journalism and rhetorical performance.
#infinite-jest
fromThe Atlantic
2 months ago

A Biography Without 'The Boring Bits'

Sophia Stewart poses a choice that many biographers struggle with: "what to do with the boring bits."
Books
Writing
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

"Light Secrets," by Joseph O'Neill

Hidden rumors and secrets complicate a lunch between friends, revealing humor, vulnerability, and a belief that everyone has concealed darkness and hidden goodness.
Writing
fromOpen Culture
1 month ago

Jack Kerouac Lists 9 Essentials for Writing Spontaneous Prose

Writing should be a rapid, breath-driven, associative outpouring that privileges rhythm, immediacy, and improvisation over revision and strict grammatical correctness.
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

"This Is How It Happens," by Molly Aitken

You are leaving work, your suit still damp from the morning's downpour, the skin on your palms peeling. You are clutching two supermarket bags, tins of cream soup and tuna knocking against one another. The rain is hard and your anorak is cheap. You are on your way to Stockbridge, to your parents' house, which only your father inhabits now that your mother is gone.
Books
Books
fromPsychology Today
2 months ago

Curing Zombies in "The Bone Temple"

Monsters evolve to mirror the cultural anxieties and ambitions of their eras, revealing societal fears about race, empire, mental health, and scientific cure.
Books
fromEngadget
1 month ago

What to read this weekend: The unsettling new horror novel, Persona

A trans woman uncovers non-consensual pornography of herself and is drawn into escalating horrors involving identity, exploitation, internet influence, and economic precarity.
fromThe Atlantic
2 months ago

The Writer's Magic Trick

A writer is a kind of magician. Their job is to create living, three-dimensional people out of the ordinary stuff of ink and paper. This is no easy task, because readers can't literally hear, touch, or observe a character. Everything that defines a human being in real life-the physical space they occupy, or how they smell, feel, and sound-is stripped away, replaced by description. But authors have one major, mystical advantage: They can show you what's happening inside of someone's brain.
Books
Books
fromMedium
1 month ago

How to start writing (like it's easy)

A profoundly immersive book can deeply alter readers and provoke self-doubt about one's own creative abilities.
Books
fromSlate Magazine
2 months ago

Are We Just Recycling Old Stories, Ideas, and Styles?

21st-century culture is abundant and accessible but suffers an innovation deficit, leaving a "blank space" where original cultural creation should emerge.
Books
fromThe Atlantic
2 months ago

Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes's Departure(s) eschews conventional plot, blending memoir, sparse romance, and reflections on memory and aging in elegant prose.
Books
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

The Perils of Killing the Already Dead

Fear of the unquiet dead drove communities to mutilate and restrain corpses across cultures long before and beyond nineteenth-century vampire lore.
Books
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

A Debut Novel About the Quest for Eternal Youth

The boundary between responsible adult and dependent child has frayed as caregivers flail through midlife while youth confront a crumbling, dishonest world.
Books
fromHarvard Gazette
2 months ago

The stories behind the books - Harvard Gazette

Harvard's library collection includes books that use layered images, movable elements, and raised type to create interactive, tactile, and accessible reading experiences.
Books
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

Is listening to an audiobook as good as reading?

Audiobooks and comics are legitimate, effective forms of reading that expand access, boost literacy, and contribute significantly to the publishing industry.
Books
fromenglish.elpais.com
2 months ago

The lost lessons of Jorge Luis Borges: His English and American literature classes

Recovered 1966 lectures by Jorge Luis Borges were published, revealing lost oral work and previously uncollected material through meticulous editorial recovery.
fromwww.npr.org
2 months ago

George Saunders' 'Vigil' is a brief and bumpy return to the Bardo

If Heaven, according to Talking Heads, is the place where nothing ever happens, the Bardo, according to George Saunders, is as jam-packed and frantic as Costco on Black Friday. We Saunders fans have been to the Bardo before that suspended state between life and death where, according to Tibetan Buddhism, a person's self-awareness helps determine what kind of existence they'll enter next.
Books
Books
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

Seven by Joanna Kavenna review a madcap journey to the limits of philosophy

Seven is an uncategorisable, idea-rich novel blending academic satire, absurdism, travel, and philosophical inquiry through a narrator's quest linked to a mythical game.
Books
fromwww.npr.org
2 months ago

Why 'Vigil' author George Saunders often revisits death in his work

K.J. Boone, a dying oil tycoon, is visited by ghosts confronting his climate-denying legacy while a woman named Jill comforts the dying.
Books
fromHarvard Gazette
2 months ago

What karaoke taught Elizabeth McCracken about fiction- Harvard Gazette

Accepting failure and personal limits fosters sustained creative work, prioritizing writing while embracing imperfect ambitions and private pleasures.
Books
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

Mass surveillance, the metaverse, making America great again': the novelists who predicted our present

An infinite branching conception of time in which every possible path occurs anticipates many-worlds ideas in physics.
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