The Foxed Page

Did you love this GIGANTIC bestseller from nine years ago? Let me remind you why! It was SO fun to dig in to how Ng makes fiction do what fiction does best: her narrative stance, structure, plotting and characterization are so strong. OR--maybe you didn't quite get the hype?? Allow me to offer a couple of explanations as to why that might be. This lecture--underscoring why certain novels are such...

NO READING REQUIRED! I READ THE WHOLE (super short) SHORT STORY TO YOU! Remember Chopin's THE AWAKENING? This 1894 story has the same vibe, same boldness, same feminist prose--but it's short! Listen in for a deeper understanding of crucial elements of old-school, classic short fiction: reminders of why the form works well and how writers today uphold or push against conventions. This twisty tiny m...

To be completely honest, I picked this up because I thought I saw it on the Booker long list. I was mistaken (!!) but WOW am I glad I read it. How is this his first novel??? Also, best title ever. *** https://blog.loa.org/2014/10/an-interview-with-jed-perl-how-lives-of.html https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dialogues-the-david-zwirner-podcast/id1400997563?i=1000554152182 https://www.kirkusrevi...

This book is SO smart. Listen in to appreciate its richness, depth and complexity. ALSO, an hour from now you'll know the crucial difference between extraction skimming and reading as a means of real understanding.

Goodman is sooooo smart. HELEN is inventive, heady, strange and HILARIOUS. Listen in to see what all those Booker judges might have identified when they longlisted this gem of a novella. Resources consulted and/or cited: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/makenna-goodman-interview https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/feb/06/helen-of-nowhere-by-makenna-goodman-review-a-perfec...

Luiselli is TOO GOOD. This readable, complex, multi-faceted text proves yet again that she's a voice we need to hear. Listen in for a better appreciation of the structure, the polyphonic nature, its autofiction elements and the crucial use of echo. Plus what I think is REALLY GOING ON HERE.

NEVER have I been so riveted by a controversy. When's the last time LITERATURE caused this kind of stir?? Listen in to explore: what Cusk is actually up to; where I think sympathy lies; how looking closely at the title, the cover, the opening, and THE TEXT gives us the best way to understand the whole knotty, complex, fascinating thing!

If you loved this book this summer (or didn't quite think it lived up to NORTH WOODS), go back to school with me (and Miles and Kate and their kids) to study why the novel works well in so many ways--and falls a little short in others. Plus! A look at how Mason's humor is really firing on all cylinders in this one! Interview referred to in podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/poured-over...

The average moviegoer can't answer that because, honestly--who's plowed through the 592-page epic poem recently? With today's lecture, no one needs to, but you might end up WANTING TO. We discuss what THE ODYSSEY actually is, when it was sung, when it was written, whether it was actually Homer who did the writing and so much more. Then we dive into the difficulty of translating this behemoth, with...

Besson might have lured us in with Marcel P., but we stayed for the STORY. Listen in to find out how the prose, the plotting and the TURN (??) in this novel function so well.

Yes. I'm going to read and analyze something I MYSELF WROTE. I promise it won't be boring. Also, it's short.

See the three question marks in the title above? Listen in to find out who would hate each one of them. We all have an impression of Stein, but Levy offers up (and problematizes) so much more.

With all its inventive, kooky, paramilitary (!) elements, Lost Lambs is delightful and wholly original. Except when it seems like a DIRECT descendent of Thomas Pynchon. Listen in to fully appreciate the narrative stance, the postmodern elements (don't worry, I'll provide a definition), the structure, and the ways this frothy novel is crucially subversive. And the gnats! Dive in to hear my theory f...

I picked up THE GIRLS WHO GREW BIG in the bookstore but ended up reading NIGHTCRAWLING. Wow is Mottley a talent to be watched. Based on a true story, the novel digs deeply into police corruption, the failures of the education and employment systems, misogyny, corruption, life as a young Black woman in Oakland...to say nothing of the realities of sex work. We explore a strong, recurring motif, figu...

Whether you love this iconic, culty, groundbreaking novel or you don't get the hype; whether you believe it's a feminist treatise or a meditation on the promise and the shortfalls of communism, you'll finish this lecture feeling like you've gotten some SERIOUS LITERATURE under your belt. If you haven't read this 1962 phenomenon--or haven't for a while--this lecture is a good (re)introduction to wh...

Honestly? I was sucked in by the covers of these slim volumes. When I saw we were about to get very groundhog-day, I wasn't so sure. After taking a close look at the title, the opening, the microcosm of marriage, the incredible figurative language and the novella's FAITH IN THE POWER OF WRITING, I'm feeling ready to dive into book two!

This novella--an excerpt of THE PALE KING--was a revelation. Just as its publisher Sarah McNally says in the preface, Wallace's cult-status fame as a challenging writer can be daunting, and his oeuvre is so large, it's hard to know where to begin. This is where to begin! The lecture is probably best heard if you've read The Pale King (and/or this amazing section itself) but I like to think lovers...

I loved The Perfect Couple. I even loved the UNperfect parts. Part of the reason there's a second tv series is because Hilderbrand is so good at what she does. Listen in to fully appreciate this juicy, splashy series! (And if you're someone who turns up her nose at Hilderbrand, but you want a frothy beach read, listen in to hear why her work is much better than you think!)

When I came across a new short story by Ben Lerner, an audio version of the story read by Lerner, an interview with Lerner about the short story AND a nonfiction piece by Lerner related to the story, I felt like I'd entered a very Lernerian world. Tune in for a quick ten minutes that will convince you to hunt down out "The Readers." Not only is this the very best prose, but the pieces also combine...

It might not be the flashiest part of Strangers, but it's worth taking a quick look at why Burden's prose functions so well. Also! My sense of specific thing that makes this far more than a cautionary tale about women and personal finances. AND! My own personal crusade about how we should describe this woman while recommending this book to everyone we know.

Andrew Sean Greer is one of those writers who wrote a book that is so uncommonly GOOD that everything after it pales in comparison. Less--with its propulsive plot, its sneaky narrator and its incredible twist--continues to be an enormous favorite of mine. VILLA COCO might stand in the shadow of that earlier work, but so much is working well here. Especially if you're someone who starts it and feel...

Moore is SO GOOD that the last half of the lecture is just me doing my favorite party trick! I think of two numbers, then go to the first number's corresponding page and the second number's line. Then I sit back and just revel (explaining all the while) in the author's sheer genius. Truly, every single line in this slim cult classic could inspire its own lecture. Listen in now to how Moore pulls o...

Famously, the enduring appeal of 84, Charing Cross Road rests on its correspondence between an American TV-writing woman and a British bookseller. But what if the slim volume's real power comes mostly just from the independent, iconoclastic, sassy and powerful Helene? Or from Helene and all the other female voices in this delightful favorite? Treat yourself today! (If you haven't read it, you migh...

Much has been made of Nelio Biedermann's wunderkind status. And there are plenty of reasons people are calling his debut novel "virtuousic" and "astonishing." It was SO fun to look at why much of this novel really worked, and why much of it . . . didn't.

Famously, the 240 "propositions" BLUETS produce a genre-bending, poetic, heady, broody, completely INGENIOUS work. Whether you've read it a dozen times or picked it up or, tried it and thought, what is happening here, listen in to more fully appreciate SO MUCH about its structure, its fascinating narrative stance, its HUMOR and the radical thing Nelson is doing by foregrounding all those old, whit...