April 28, 2019
“Can’t You Rest Now?”: Nightwood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Madness
I have a theory: the ending of Season 7, Episode 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (“Beneath You”) was inspired by Djuna Barnes’s queer modernist novel Nightwood (1936). I know it sounds […]
June 22, 2017
Minor League Season Begins—Again
People asked Ron Shelton, again and again, if he was going to write a sequel to Bull Durham. He couldn’t bring himself to do it, and I’m glad he didn’t. […]
January 31, 2016
The Happiness Game: On Yael Hadaya’s “Housebroken” (Part 2)
“The Happiness Game,” the second story in Housebroken, is my favorite of the three novellas. While the idea of a happiness game is a universal paradox, it is also quintessentially an Israeli one. […]
January 25, 2016
I Wanted to Ruin It for You: On Yael Hedaya’s Housebroken (Part 1)
Do you remember that strangely addictive taste of drugstore lipstick on your teenage lips And how it wouldn’t taste the same if you bit right into it? But […]