In Hisham Matar’s writing, I saw a rhetoric of missingness punctuated with lyricism. The strength of Matar’s keen lyric sense – the ways he captures small, vivid perceptions that convey a deeper and grander sense of place or situation – works as a tool for exploring missingness by catching and Read more…
I have come to write, think, teach, and believe according to categories of the world, and of the world as it recreates itself in my mind; those categories I call “tropes.” I borrow the word from rhetoric and literary studies, because they are two disciplines that have shaped me. “Trope” Read more…
A fact or a theory that takes its meanings from a particular discipline interests me in the ways it might be useful outside that discipline. How might a biologist’s ideas about morphology transfer to literary form? Do literary texts have feedback loops, like thermostats or software? From architecture, Christopher Alexander Read more…