PositiveThe New YorkerBoyle is hardly the first to want to record life in its entirety, but her persistence, attention to strange detail, and humorous sense of her own abjection begin to feel like a radical act ... Liveblog ’s closest ancestor is really Andy Warhol’s novel a., a series of transcriptions of conversations between Warhol’s Factory stars as they go about life in New York City ... Boyle’s persistence, attention to detail, and humorous sense of her own abjection in Liveblog begin to feel like a radical act. But the quest to transform life into literature can ruin the life.
Tatyana Tolstaya, Trans. by Anya Migdal
RaveThe New Yorker\"The best of Tolstaya’s stories trace that intersection of imagination and memory, where the two become something greater by not being merely one or the other ... Tolstaya quotes Kipling: \'When your demon is in charge, do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait, and obey.\' The strength of her stories comes from fidelity to that call. Real, imaginary—why worry the difference? Your demon can figure out the rules later ... My powers of second sight are still a work in progress, but these stories make you worry about—or thrill to—what would happen if you started to see too much.\
