The Interesting Times #287 (29.7.26)

Issue #287

• The magic lantern. >>The Shadow of the Object.

• Familiar and strange. >>Repetition.

• Unfolding the past. >>Repetition.

• An uncomplicated man. >>The Odyssey. >>The Odyssey. >>The Endless Odyssey.

• The novel as arc lamp. >>Twenty Minutes of Silence.

• What narrative can and can’t do. >>Dog Days.

• Refusing ‘The Good Story’. >>Dog Days.

• The ordinary extraordinary event. >>Dog Days.

• Skipping and skimming. >>Beginning Middle End.

• Beginnings that are ends and middles that are beginnings. >>Beginning Middle End.

• Sound, memory, and new beginnings. >>Beginning Middle End.

• The 2026 Booker Prize long list. >>Start reading!

• Life into art. >>Knife-Woman.

• Five Lives changed forever. >>The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran.

• At the desk. >>The Writer’s Room.

• Life to the page. >>Transcendence for Beginners.

• A dialogue with the facts. >>Becoming George.

• Consulting the oracle. >>Thomas chats with Alice (2022).

• What to do? >>No New York.

• More than Theorietical Girls. >>No New York.

• Female commodification. >>No New York.

• Artist outsiders. >>In the dreamlife you need a rubber soul.

• A metaphysical jigsaw puzzle. >>Air.

• Not part of the calculation. >>On the Calculation of Volume.

• The long stretch. >>On the Calculation of Volume.

• “Books picked me up on bad days.” >>Bookish.

• Why you keep buying books you don’t need.

• The cell-phone novel craze did not in fact destroy literature.

• The 2026 finalists for the PANZ Book Design Awards.

• The Esperanto dream.

• Our film recommendation this week: The Fire Within.

• Am I still a woman?