Essays, reviews, occasional fiction and other BS

NB: A lot of this stuff is paywalled. If there’s a piece that you’re particularly interested in, drop me an email and I’ll send it to you.

2023

A review of Camilo José Cela’s The Hive in The New York Times

“Natural Born Killers,” a review of Paul Auster’s Bloodbath Nation in The Literary Review

2022

“The Screw Tapes,” a review of Lance Scott Walker’s biography of DJ Screw in The Baffler

“Brick, Mortar, and Rot,” an essay on Rafael Chirbes’s Cremation in The New York Review of Books

“Hell, or Catalonia,” an essay on Jordi Ibáñez Fanés’s Infern, Purgatori, Paradís in The Baffler

“Never Gonna Give You Up,” an essay on Olufemi O. Taiwo’s Elite Capture in The Baffler

“What if We Could Remember Our Golden Ages,” a review of Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter for The New York Times

“You Shall Be What You Are,” a translation from Rafael Chirbes’s Diaries in The Baffler

Sam Russek interviews me about my novel My Father’s Diet for The Baffler

Jamie Richards interviews me about my novel My Father’s Diet for The Rumpus

2021

“Every Last Myth and Slander,” a review of Darius James’s Negrophobia in Review 31

“A History of Gin,” a review of Gin in The Washington Examiner

“Sympathy for the Dumb,” a review of Ermanno Cavazzoni’s Brief Lives of Idiots in The Washington Examiner

“Smash, Champ, Huck, Porkchop,” a review of Michael Patrick F. Smith’s The Good Hand in The Washington Examiner

“The Art of Choking,” an essay about BJJ and training during the pandemic in The Washington Examiner

“When Art Meets Data,” a review of Diana Seave Greenwald’s Painting by Numbers in The Washington Examiner

“Can Everyone Be Beautiful?”, a review of Amia Srinivasan’s The Right to Sex in The Washington Examiner

“The Emigrant,” a review of Carole Angier’s Sebald biography in The Washington Examiner

“Normal People,” a review of Gary Indiana’s crime trilogy, in The Baffler

“What Does a Fact Look Like?”, an essay on narratology, fake news, and the phenomenology of being misinformed, in The Baffler

“Pomp,” a review of Elfriede Jelinek’s The Royal Road in the Times Literary Supplement

2020

“Decline and Salvation,” a review of David Heatley’s Qualification in the Times Literary Supplement

“Undiscovered Masterpieces,” a review of Jürgen Egyptien’s Hans Lebert: eine biographische Silhouette in the Times Literary Supplement

“The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Chaturbator,” a review of two books on webcam sex for The Baffler

“The Human Comedy,” a review of Peter Brooks’s Balzac’s Lives in The Washington Examiner

“Goya’s Darkness,” a review of Janis Tomlin’s Goya in The Washington Examiner

“Is Autism the Engine of History,” a review of Simon Baron Cohen’s The Pattern Seekers in The Washington Examiner

“The Right to Love,” a review of Leila Slimani’s Sex and Lies in The Washington Examiner

“Our Men in Moscow,” a review of Catherine Belton’s Putin’s People in The Washington Examiner

“Clubbing in the New Gilded Age,” a review of Ashley Mears’s Very Important People in The Washington Examiner

“The Dignity of the Buffoon,” a review of Curzio Malaparte’s Diary of a Foreigner in Paris in The Washington Examiner

“Renaissance Man,” a review of The Idea of Perfection by Paul Valéry in The Washington Examiner

“Stale Obscenities,” a review of Robert Glücks’s Margery Kempe in The Washington Examiner

“The Forgotten Modernist,” a review of Robert Musil’s Agathe, or the Forgotten Sister in The Washington Examiner

“Second Wind,” a review of Garth Greenwell’s Cleanness in The Literary Review

2019

“Uruguay’s Detective of Despair,” a review of Juan Carlos Onetti’s A Dream Come True in The Washington Examiner

“Mudslingers,” a review of Stefano Apostolo’s Schwarzach St. Veit: Thomas Bernhards unveröffentlichtes Romanprojekte in the Times Literary Suppleme

“The Sleep of Reason,” a review of Carlos Rojas’s Valley of the Fallen in The New York Review of Books

“Freedom Regained,” a review of Joszef Czapski’s lectures on Proust in The Literary Review

“Society is the Biggest Murder Scene of All,” a review of Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina in the LARB

2018

“The Experimental German Writer for Whom “Dumb” is a Badge of Honor,” a short essay on Rainald Goetz for Lithub

“Drinking It In,” a review of Gerald Murnane’s Stream System in the Times Literary Supplement

“Stranded Whale,” a review of Jan Bürger’s biography of Hans Henny Jahnn in the Times Literary Supplement

“At the Prado,” a review of a Mariano Fortuny y Marsal retrospective, in The London Review of Books

“Black Comedy,” a review of Fran Ross’s Oreo in The Literary Review

“The Disappearance of the Subject,” a review of Armen Avenassian’s Miamification in the LARB

2017

A review of Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Lexicon in the Times Literary Supplement

“Ongören on My Mind,” A review of Orhan Pamuk’s The Red-Haired Woman in The Literary Review

“Eastern Approaches,” a review of Mathias Énard’s Compass in The Literary Review

“Spinning Out Yarns,” a review of Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s The World Goes On in The Literary Review

“Media and Transparency,” an essay on Byung Chul-Han in the LARB

A review of Achille Mbembe’s Critique of Black Reason in Boundary 2

“All Desert Islands Are the Same,” an excerpt from Ricardo Vázquez Montalban’s Reflections of Robinson Crusoe on Bacalao in Words Without Borders

2016

“No More Emails,” a review of Enrique Vila-Matas’s Vampire in Love in the Times Literary Supplement

A review Basma Abdel Aziz’s The Queue in the Times Literary Supplement

A review of Günter Grass’s Of All That Ends in the Times Literary Supplement

A review of Josep Maria de Sagarra’s Private Life in the Times Literary Supplement

“Both a Fish and an Ichthyologist,” en essay on Viktor Shklovksy in the LARB

“No Euskera” by Ramón Pinilla in Words Without Borders

2015

A review of Toni Sala’s The Boys in the Times Literary Supplement

“Kafka Smiled,” a review of Paul Reitter’s Bambi’s Jewish Roots of in the Times Literary Supplement

A review of Carmen Boullosa’s Texas: The Great Theft in the Times Literary Supplement

A review of Juan Villoro’s The Guilty in the Times Literary Supplement

“Concerning the Nobility of My Dog,” 3:AM

2014

“Cadaqués,” 3:AM

“Die Gewissensforschungsmaschine,” on Marianne Fritz for Asymptote

“The Man in the Turban,” a translation from Pere Gimferrer’s Fortuny in Asymptote

2013

“Melancholy and its Correctives,” 3:AM

“The Weight of an Aphorism,” 3:AM

“The Idea of the Mouse,” 3:AM

“A Visit to the African Museum,” 3:AM

“Hope as Insult and Provocation,” on Jean Améry for Asymptote

“With a Burning Church Steeple Under Each Arm,” on Josef Winkler for Asymptote

An excerpt from Josef Winkler’s Natura Morta in Asymptote