Alenushka — Viktor Vasnetsov

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Alenushka, 1881 by Viktor Vasnetsov (1848-1926)

Black Spruce — Jamie Wyeth

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Black Spruce, 1994 by Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946)

Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine — Artemisia Gentileschi

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Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine by Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653)

Late Visitors — Paul Fenniak

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Late Visitors, 2017 by Paul Fenniak (b. 1965)

Christmas Card — Aubrey Beardsley

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A Christmas card (1895) designed by Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898)

“A Tale of Christmas” — Moebius

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“A Tale of Christmas” by Moebius. Published in Heavy Metal, December 1979. Via the Bristol Board.

Untitled (Club Couple) — Kerry James Marshall

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Untitled (Club Couple), 2014 by Kerry James Marshall (b. 1955)

Charles Darwin at the age of 75 — Adrian Ghenie

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Charles Darwin at the age of 75, 2014 by Adrian Ghenie (b. 1977)

A Distinct Affection of a More Animal Kind — Sanam Khatibi

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A Distinct Affection of a More Animal Kind, 2016 by Sanam Khatibi (b. 1979)

The Knives — Michaël Borremans

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The Knives by Michaël Borremans (b. 1963)

Reviews, riffs, anti-reviews, and interviews of 2017 (and seventeen roosters)

I read fewer books in 2017 than I have in years, and wrote a lot less on this blog than in the past. There are (uninteresting) reasons. There were lots of books and films that I wish I’d written about—maybe I’ll squeeze them into a post in the next week—but for now, mostly as a means of archiving and organizing (and a reminder to update the reviews page), these are the longer things I wrote on this blog this year (and, uh, some roosters):

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Garden with Roosters, 1917 by Gustav Klimt

A review of Ishmael Reed’s Christmas satire, The Terrible Twos

RIP William H. Gass

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Th Rooster, 1966 by Ivan Generalic

Not a review of Laurent Binet’s novel The Seventh Function of Language

Eddie Campbell’s canon of great graphic novels, 1977-2001

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Sparring Cockerels by Charles Tunnicliffe

A review of Blade Runner 2049

On Philip K. Dick’s novel A Maze of Death

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Two Roosters, 1905 by Pablo Picasso

Hurricane Irma reading riff

A review of Gisèle Prassinos’s collection of surreal anti-fables, The Arthritic Grasshopper

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Rooster and Hen with Hydrangeas by Ito Jakuchu

A riff on rereading Carson McCullers’ novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

This is not a review of Shattering the Muses, a strange hybrid “novel” by Rainer J. Hanshe and Federico Gori

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The Rooster Goes on a Trip by Michael Sowa

Yuri Herrera’s Kingdom Cons condenses myth into vibrant narco noir

Lost in The Vorrh

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Rooster and Chicks by Ohara Koson

“Translation is an act of risk” | An interview with Rainer J. Hanshe on translating Baudelaire’s My Heart Laid Bare

Not a review of Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian

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Rooster, 1900 by Ivan Bilibin

On Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a story about storytelling

A quick note on Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Heart of a Dog

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Cock on Drum, 1882 by Shibata Zeshin

Let me recommend Antonio di Benedetto’s overlooked novel Zama

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The Cock Fighters, 1950 by André Fougeron

At any moment they could could swell and become something other than what they were | A riff on Paul Bowles

Helen DeWitt’s novel Lightning Rods just wasn’t for me

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The Cock Fight, 1882 by Emile Claus

A review of Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, Ishmael Reed’s syncretic Neo-HooDoo revenge Western

A review of Robert Coover’s excellent new novel Huck Out West

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Dead Cock, 1660 by Gabriel Metsu

Canoe — Aron Wiesenfeld

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Canoe by Aron Wiesenfeld (b. 1972)

Untitled — Dado

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Untitled, 1969 by Dado (Miodrag Đurić, 1933-2010)

 

The Waiting Room — George Tooker

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The Waiting Room, 1959 by George Tooker (1920-2011)

Crux Mystica — Agostino Arrivabene

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Crux Mystica, 2017 by Agostino Arrivabene (b. 1967)

Animal Kingdom — Stella Snead

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Animal Kingdom, 1946 by Stella Snead (1910-2006)

 

Nemesis (The Great Fortune) — Albrecht Durer

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Nemesis (The Great Fortune), 1503 by Albrecht Durer (1471-1528)