Jared Marcel Pollen | The Smart Set

Tom McCarthy: Mr. Modular

Jared Marcel Pollen — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 12:30:00 +0000

We are not inclined to think of the book as technology. Indeed, it seems utterly foreign to our modern conception of tech, an antique thing in an age of silicon and diode light. But make no mistake: bound, linear text is a technological medium, as is the medium upon which it’s based — the phonetic […]

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Truth, Social Justice, and the American Writer

Jared Marcel Pollen — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 11:58:26 +0000

As the scenery collapses around the release of two recently scandalized novels, American Dirt and My Dark Vanessa, there should still be time to squeeze in a few common sense points about what writers are apparently permitted to do and not do in the realm of fiction. More than anything, what the fallout surrounding these two novels has shown is that not even the imagination is safe from the pressures […]

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Metronomic Underground

Jared Marcel Pollen — Mon, 18 Nov 2019 12:30:52 +0000

When seen from above, the city center of Prague resembles a spider’s web, links of lean medieval streets that branch forth from the old town square and issue out towards the Vltava river. Wherever you happen to find yourself along this section of the river’s bend, you will invariably see Letná Park, and rising above the tree line at its crest, a tall red needle, knifing the sky and seesawing back and forth in the sun. From a […]

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