From Genders, Suzanne Leonard (Simmons): "I Really Must Be an Emma Bovary": Female Literacy and Adultery in Feminist Fiction; and Jade McKay and Elizabeth Parsons (Deakin): Out of Wedlock: The Consummation and Consumption of Marriage in Contemporary Romance Fiction. From The Atlantic Monthly, Evan Connell's Mrs. Bridge is an American masterpiece of prewar repression and postwar realism; and Christopher Hitchens reviews The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard. An interview with S.J. Chambers on the current spate of monster mashup novels. A review of The Quest for Epic in Contemporary American Fiction: John Updike, Philip Roth and Don DeLillo by Catherine Morley. Some scholars are turning to M.R.I.’s and evolutionary theory to explore how and why people read fiction. The Golden Girl Image: Robin Black says making older women complicated heroines in fiction is a political act that can help bring about social change. Ben Jeffery on the novels of Michel Houellebecq. James Wolcott on how Donald Barthelme's antic fiction influenced a generation of post-postmodernists. Anis Shivani announces the death of the post-9/11 novel. When we think of the libertarian tradition, we tend naturally to think of political philosophers and economists of the past, but surely one part of the libertarian tradition belongs to novelists and other fiction writers, like Yevgeny Zamyatin. Linda Grant chooses the best-dressed women in fiction, those "whose clothes say as much about the wearer as their narrative fate". Berkeley boho Philip K. Dick spent his final years in Orange County, which suited him fine, his daughter says. Houston native Donald Barthelme never wrote about the breeze over Buffalo Bayou or the rise and fall of Texas oil fortunes — does Texas have the right to claim him?
