Many of the stories repeat a narrative, looping moments of loneliness filled by a stranger’s fingers. The endings are often gloomy and ruinous, and so are the beginnings.

In C, his newest novel, Tom McCarthy proposes a state of being that revolves many parts around an unusual temporal whole and, once again, circumvents the conventions of 19th-century realism. Writer David Varno delves in.

“What, at this point in time, can we make of a man,” the narrator of Jacques Jouet’s most recent novella, Savage, asks himself.

David Varno on Frederick Seidel’s poetry.

NYU’s English department holds a panel that begs the question, “Is There A Future For the Literary Novel?” Host and BOMB contributing editor reports on the conversation.

David Varno reflects on the Charles Olsen documentary Polis Is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place.

John Wray’s novel Lowboy has been out for a few weeks now, and the media attention has been universally enthusiastic.

Set in Cuba during the Special Period, Ruins tells of a middle aged man’s attempts to earn a living, deal with his rebellious daughter, and accept what has happened to his country.

About a week after Valentine’s Day, I found myself on a barge under the Brooklyn Bridge where a pair of early music revivalists were set up in a perfectly amorous display.

David Varno reports from the launch party forWashington Square’s Winter/Spring ’09 edition.