Archive
The complete Open Letters Monthly Archive.
In our second annual Fiction Bestseller List feature, our writers temporarily put aside their dogeared copies of Hume and Mann, roll up their sleeves, and dig into the ten bestselling novels in the land as of September 6, 2009 – in the tranquil days before a certain Dan Brown novel began tromping all over that list like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo. Before you spend your hard-earned money at the bookstore, join us in a tour of the way we read now.
Read MoreA local, a booster, and a tourist take on New York; Sam Sacks tours the city with E.L. Doctorow, Colm Tóibín, and Colum McCann.
Read More"You always felt time as a tangible heartbeat in the mountains. The days were short." Dive into Ron Carlson's novel, The Signal, by starting with this review by Sam Sacks.
Read MoreIn his review of An Expensive Education, Sam Sacks unearths the vast geopolitical conspiracies being hatched in Nick McDonell's Harvard.
Read MoreColson Whitehead, one of our most intellectually satisfying writers, has written a “novel” that meanders suspiciously like a memoir. Sam Sacks reviews Sag Harbor.
Read MoreArthur Phillips’ new novel, The Song Is You, takes a sentimental bachelor’s soundtrack and sets it to adult themes of family tragedy. Sam Sacks listens to hear whether the opus reveals new growth in the novelist—and whether it will grow on the reader.
Read MoreChina’s burgeoning modern literature – by citizens and expats alike – presents challenges to Western audiences (and sometimes to Chinese censors). Sam Sacks samples 3 recent novels.
Read MoreLauren Groff's Delicate Edible Bird is a story collection packaged for women readers but of interest to any reader
Read MoreIn her new novel Lark and Termite, Jayne Anne Phillips grapples with the challenge of using intricate language to convey wordless innocence. Sam Sacks is sympathetic to her goal, but he can’t help thinking of William Faulkner …
Read MorePatrick McCabe's new novel imagines the life of Irish playboy Christopher McCool. Sam Sacks reviews The Holy City.
Read MoreFrancisco Coloane's collection of short stories takes readers into little-visited corners of southern Chile. Sam Sacks reviews Tierra del Fuego.
Read MoreRoberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives took the literary world by storm, and his latest posthumous release, 2666, is five times as long and ten times as ambitious. Find out what tales dead men tell as Sam Sacks tackles this immense and problematic monster.
Read MoreWhat is it about Booker and Nobel judges that make one reach for Chambers Biographical Dictionary only to hurl it across the room in despair? Sam Sacks seeks the source of prize-winner Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger.
Read MoreIn Keith Lee Morris' novel, a rogues gallery of characters come together at a league dart tournament. Sam Sacks reviews.
Read MoreThe Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski
Read MoreIt was only a matter of time before Hurricane Katrina and the havoc it wrought on New Orleans filtered into the fiction we read, and Tom Piazza’s latest novel City of Refuge is set squarely in and around the disaster and its victims. Sam Sacks tours the result.
Read MoreFor sixty years, the great and shapeshifting American author Evan S. Connell has woven strands of short stories through the fabric of his ongoing larger works. These beguiling stories have changed (and often deepened) with time while many of their ardors and tensions have remained the same, creating an irresistible dialectic. The three founding editors of Open Letters, united in their appreciation for this living legend of the American literary scene, pay tribute by writing a piece apiece on Connell’s life, career, and latest short story collection, Lost in Uttar Pradesh.
Read MoreSince Salman Rushdie’s published The Enchantress of Florence, plenty of critics have trotted out what Martin Amis calls “the bullshit factfile” to to make their wordcount. Sam Sacks, for one, has heard more than enough about the fatwa, thanks…
Read MoreStephen L. Carter's Palace Council occupies the rarefied territory of the 1960s Harlem elite. Sam Sacks reviews.
Read MoreNear the punchbowl, within reach of the finger sandwiches, the early critics of James Frey’s Bright Shiny Morning had an oh-so-polite set of things to say about it. Out back in the alley, other critics were ready to pounce. In this regular feature, Sam Sacks officiates between the Sharks and the Jets.
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