PositiveThe New RepublicThis collection of Cole’s feels rawer and more personal than those that have come before...layering as it does his art essays with homages to lost friends and analysis of his own 2012 novel, Open City. There are moments when the self-citation begins to feel self-indulgent or when the highbrow tips into the merely pretentious ... I admit I share his preference for novels that feature unsettling encounters with landscape or art over countesses, but I am still relieved when he shows a little sense of humor ... The feeling of sadness that obviously motivated these essays, the feeling of being weighed down by all one is called to see—the phrase is bearing witness, after all—is made lighter by the example of other artists, the potential for joy in sensing all the world is.
Yuri Herrera, Trans. by Lisa Dillman
RaveThe New RepublicThe resulting novel has the quality of a fable, in which the banished words are barely submerged. Their replacement by symbols, allusions, or close cognates makes the political reality underlying the novels both more distant and more disquieting. To read Herrera is to be immersed, almost involuntarily, in the uncanny ... Herrera’s characters aren’t good guys so much as they are people who are not quite of the world that seeks to harm them. Their detachment protects them and lets them serve as guides ... At one point in Kingdom Cons The Artist boasts, 'If you’re just saying what happened, why bother with a song? Corridos aren’t only true; they’re also beautiful and just.' He may come to realize how his corridos can be used to other ends, but Herrera’s novels stay beautiful and just.
Solmaz Sharif
PositiveBookforumSharif’s poems go further, vivifying dead language and drawing it close ... In veering between intimate and official knowledge, Sharif returns repeatedly to the theme of who has the authority (and who the obligation) to speak about violence ... reminds us of powers that would rather us not see the grief at all.
