Anis Shivani
American Cities Weren’t Revitalized by the White ‘Creative Class.’ Immigrants Made Them Great.
When Crossing Over Becomes a Deadly Game
Oscar Casares has written a powerful novel about the emotional traumas of migration, implicating all social classes.
Each time Oscar Casares comes out with a book, it seems he must have written 10 others in the meantime. The progress in rhythmic flow, plot concision and character development from one book to the next is that great. His … Read More
Q&A with Michener Center Director and Author James Magnuson
Texas Observer contributor Anis Shivani, who writes fiction, poetry and criticism from his home in Houston, reviews James Magnuson’s novel Famous Writers I Have Known in the March issue. The novel centers on a J.D. Salinger-like literary recluse named V.S. … Read More
Bursting the MFA Bubble with James Magnuson’s Famous Writers I Have Known
James Magnuson’s "Famous Writers I Have Known" mounts a thoughtful critique of the institutionalization of art in our age of economic uncertainty. Read More
Poems New and Old from Texas Poet Laureate Rosemary Catacalos
2013 Texas Poet Laureate Rosemary Catacalos, a longtime San Antonio resident of Mexican and Greek heritage, makes frequent use of the Ariadne myth in her 1984 book, Again for the First Time, originally published in 1984 and recently reissued by … Read More
Book Report: George Packer’s American Autopsy
In his new nonfiction opus The Unwinding, author George Packer ties together the various strands of American decline in a way that no contemporary novelist has managed. Read More
Why Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom” Is The Most Overrated Recent Novel
Jonathan Franzen has written a poignant book about coming of age in the Midwest of the 1970s, the discontents of family, searching for identity in a postmodern world, and confronting mortality without descending into bathos and narcissism. It even has … Read More