Critical Notes

Roundup: Meghan O’Rourke, Michel Houellebecq, Harvey Pekar, and more

By Mark Athitakis

Michael Lindgren reviews Meghan O’Rourke’s new poetry collection, Once, for The L Magazine.

Michelle Bailat-Jones takes an extended look at the work of controversial French novelist Michel Houellebecq at the Quarterly Conversation.

John Reed looks at Harvey Pekar, radical New York artists, the publishing industry, and more at the Rumpus to argue for the political necessity of challenging conventional narrative structures.

Kerri Arsenault reviews Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Jerusalem: The Biography for Bookslut.

Leora Skolkin-Smith’s story “A Tape of Helen Gilderstein Speaking” appears at jewishfiction.net.

Joseph Peschel reviews Dagoberto Gilb’s story collection, Before the End, After the Beginning, for the Boston Globe.

Denise Low’s poem “Two Gates” is featured in Ted Kooser’s weekly column, American Life in Poetry.

Jim Carmin reviews Luis Alberto Urrea’s novel Queen of America for the Oregonian.

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