Memory, Regrets, and Memorials: A Review of Denis Johnson’s “The Largesse of the Sea Maiden”

In the past couple years, there have been quite a few works published just months within the deaths of their authors. In addition to Jenny Diski’s In Gratitude, W. P. Kinsella’s Russian Dolls, Umberto Eco’s Numero Zero, and C. D. Wright’s The Poet, The Lion . . ., Canongate has announced a new collection of Leonard Cohen poems entitled Flame to be released later this year. Many of these works discuss death or old age directly, while in others, the […]

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Fictional Absences and Incomplete Fiction: A Review of “Dandelions” by Yasunari Kawabata

Dandelions is the final novel from Nobel Prize winning author Yasunari Kawabata. Though it was left unfinished when Kawabata committed suicide in 1972, it is a mark of the novel’s peculiar greatness that it does not feel incomplete; less polished in places, maybe, but aching throughout with the texture of dream. Dandelions is a beautiful work by one of Japan’s most celebrated authors, and we are fortunate to have the novel published in English for the first time.

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