/Roupenian/ general

[Anonymous No.14082649]

Who else admires this angelic writer?

[Anonymous No.14082667]

she have nice feet?

[Anonymous No.14082671]

Is that JonTron?

[Anonymous No.14083548]

[Anonymous No.14083555]

>>14082649
Unironically female JonTron

[Anonymous No.14083563]

>>14082649
Why did she write and will she be my gf?

[Anonymous No.14083568]

>>14083555
I was thinking the same. What the fuck is this witchcraft.

[Anonymous No.14083572]

>>14083568
If you half close your eyes you can almost see his neckbeard

[Anonymous No.14083891]

>>14082667
Exceptionally, but she's modest about them

[Anonymous No.14084418]

She is a supreme emotional architect. I will be posting my favorite Roupenianisms:

>From that small exchange about Red Vines, over the next several weeks they built up an elaborate scaffolding of jokes via text, riffs that unfolded and shifted so quickly that she sometimes had a hard time keeping up. He was very clever, and she found that she had to work to impress him. Soon she noticed that when she texted him he usually texted her back right away, but if she took more than a few hours to respond his next message would always be short and wouldn’t include a question, so it was up to her to re-initiate the conversation, which she always did. A few times, she got distracted for a day or so and wondered if the exchange would die out altogether, but then she’d think of something funny to tell him or she’d see a picture on the Internet that was relevant to their conversation, and they’d start up again. She still didn’t know much about him, because they never talked about anything personal, but when they landed two or three good jokes in a row there was a kind of exhilaration to it, as if they were dancing.
She captures quite perfectly phone-based flirtation and quasi-courtship. When you here some people discuss contemporary life and social media presences, I think we tend to think its all too much and all too incoherent. Kristen makes emotions glare at you. It's quite frightening.

>While she was home over break, they texted nearly non-stop, not only jokes but little updates about their days. They started saying good morning and good night, and when she asked him a question and he didn’t respond right away she felt a jab of anxious yearning. She learned that Robert had two cats, named Mu and Yan, and together they invented a complicated scenario in which her childhood cat, Pita, would send flirtatious texts to Yan, but whenever Pita talked to Mu she was formal and cold, because she was jealous of Mu’s relationship with Yan.

>“Why are you texting all the time?” Margot’s stepdad asked her at dinner. “Are you having an affair with someone?”

>“Yes,” Margot said. “His name is Robert, and I met him at the movie theatre. We’re in love, and we’re probably going to get married.”

>“Hmm,” her stepdad said. “Tell him we have some questions for him.”

>“My parents are asking about u,” Margot texted, and Robert sent her back a smiley-face emoji whose eyes were hearts.
The unspoken, subtextual desperation here is what really strikes me. Both of these people are quite lonely, fully atomised, but they valiantly try to connect. The cat stuff connects, imagine that. I suppose they're both cat people so maybe that makes sense. The energy of their relationship is always just enough to not die. It's tepid, clammy.

[Anonymous No.14084450]

>>14084418
Stop it, Kristen:
>Robert came to pick her up in a muddy white Civic with candy wrappers spilling out of the cup holders. On the drive, he was quieter than she’d expected, and he didn’t look at her very much. Before five minutes had gone by, she became wildly uncomfortable, and, as they got on the highway, it occurred to her that he could take her someplace and rape and murder her; she hardly knew anything about him, after all.

>Just as she thought this, he said, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to murder you,” and she wondered if the discomfort in the car was her fault, because she was acting jumpy and nervous, like the kind of girl who thought she was going to get murdered every time she went on a date.

>“It’s O.K.—you can murder me if you want,” she said, and he laughed and patted her knee. But he was still disconcertingly quiet, and all her bubbling attempts at making conversation bounced right off him. At the theatre, he made a joke to the cashier at the concession stand about Red Vines, which fell flat in a way that embarrassed everyone involved, but Margot most of all.
...
>“So, do you want to go get a drink?” he asked when they got back to the car, as if being polite were an obligation that had been imposed on him. It seemed obvious to Margot that he was expecting her to say no and that, when she did, they wouldn’t talk again. That made her sad, not so much because she wanted to continue spending time with him as because she’d had such high expectations for him over break, and it didn’t seem fair that things had fallen apart so quickly.

>“We could go get a drink, I guess?” she said.

>“If you want,” he said.

>“If you want” was such an unpleasant response that she sat silently in the car until he poked her leg and said, “What are you sulking about?”

>“I’m not sulking,” she said. “I’m just a little tired.”
I feel throughout this story that it is a miracle for human beings to ever connect. How does anyone manage to find someone and fall in love? It's one hit in the gut after another:
>“No, I could use a drink, after that movie.” Even though it had been playing at the mainstream theatre, the film he’d chosen was a very depressing drama about the Holocaust, so inappropriate for a first date that when he suggested it she said, “Lol r u serious,” and he made some joke about how he was sorry that he’d misjudged her taste and he could take her to a romantic comedy instead.

[Anonymous No.14084460]

Cringe kiss kino:
>But, when Robert saw her face crumpling, a kind of magic happened. All the tension drained out of his posture; he stood up straight and wrapped his bearlike arms around her. “Oh, sweetheart,” he said. “Oh, honey, it’s O.K., it’s all right. Please don’t feel bad.” She let herself be folded against him, and she was flooded with the same feeling she’d had outside the 7-Eleven—that she was a delicate, precious thing he was afraid he might break. He kissed the top of her head, and she laughed and wiped her tears away.

>“I can’t believe I’m crying because I didn’t get into a bar,” she said. “You must think I’m such an idiot.” But she knew he didn’t think that, from the way he was gazing at her; in his eyes, she could see how pretty she looked, smiling through her tears in the chalky glow of the streetlight, with a few flakes of snow coming down.

>He kissed her then, on the lips, for real; he came for her in a kind of lunging motion and practically poured his tongue down her throat. It was a terrible kiss, shockingly bad; Margot had trouble believing that a grown man could possibly be so bad at kissing. It seemed awful, yet somehow it also gave her that tender feeling toward him again, the sense that even though he was older than her, she knew something he didn’t.

[Anonymous No.14084470]

Could men ever be emotionally intelligent enough to compose this? Asking for a friend...
>She was starting to think that she understood him—how sensitive he was, how easily he could be wounded—and that made her feel closer to him, and also powerful, because once she knew how to hurt him she also knew how he could be soothed. She asked him lots of questions about the movies he liked, and she spoke self-deprecatingly about the movies at the artsy theatre that she found boring or incomprehensible; she told him about how much her older co-workers intimidated her, and how she sometimes worried that she wasn’t smart enough to form her own opinions on anything. The effect of this on him was palpable and immediate, and she felt as if she were petting a large, skittish animal, like a horse or a bear, skillfully coaxing it to eat from her hand.

[Anonymous No.14084491]

>Margot sat on the bed while Robert took off his shirt and unbuckled his pants, pulling them down to his ankles before realizing that he was still wearing his shoes and bending over to untie them. Looking at him like that, so awkwardly bent, his belly thick and soft and covered with hair, Margot recoiled. But the thought of what it would take to stop what she had set in motion was overwhelming; it would require an amount of tact and gentleness that she felt was impossible to summon. It wasn’t that she was scared he would try to force her to do something against her will but that insisting that they stop now, after everything she’d done to push this forward, would make her seem spoiled and capricious, as if she’d ordered something at a restaurant and then, once the food arrived, had changed her mind and sent it back.

[Anonymous No.14084508]

>>14084418
>but they valiantly try to connect.
>valiantly
if is something is completely mild, dull and coward. this people are the contraty of something valiant. not even emotional valiant.

[Anonymous No.14084511]

>>14084491
>Encouraged by her progress, she pulled her shirt up over her head. Robert reached up and scooped her breast out of her bra, so that it jutted half in and half out of the cup, and rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. This was uncomfortable, so she leaned forward, pushing herself into his hand. He got the hint and tried to undo her bra, but he couldn’t work the clasp, his evident frustration reminiscent of his struggle with the keys, until at last he said, bossily, “Take that thing off,” and she complied.
...
>As they kissed, she found herself carried away by a fantasy of such pure ego that she could hardly admit even to herself that she was having it. Look at this beautiful girl, she imagined him thinking. She’s so perfect, her body is perfect, everything about her is perfect, she’s only twenty years old, her skin is flawless, I want her so badly, I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anyone else, I want her so bad I might die.
...
>She didn’t mean to laugh; she knew well enough already that, while Robert might enjoy being the subject of gentle, flirtatious teasing, he was not a person who would enjoy being laughed at, not at all. But she couldn’t help it. Losing her virginity had been a long, drawn-out affair preceded by several months’ worth of intense discussion with her boyfriend of two years, plus a visit to the gynecologist and a horrifically embarrassing but ultimately incredibly meaningful conversation with her mom, who, in the end, had not only reserved her a room at a bed-and-breakfast but, after the event, written her a card. The idea that, instead of that whole involved, emotional process, she might have watched a pretentious Holocaust movie, drunk three beers, and then gone to some random house to lose her virginity to a guy she’d met at a movie theatre was so funny that suddenly she couldn’t stop laughing, though the laughter had a slightly hysterical edge.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !mxvabIoSIE No.14084513]

>>14084508
coward?

[Anonymous No.14084579]

>>14084513
they did not valiently try to connect. they try to connect with a social and pretty normal method trying to be not too awkward or not too pushy. i mean, something valiently showing his feelings would be seen like an insane person to people who message things like that. just saying.

coward because they hide his real feelings till they think they will not gonna be rejected.

[Anonymous No.14084603]

The swirling momentum comes to a head, the finalities of the story also text messages:
>She grabbed the friend she was with, a guy named Albert. “Oh, my God, that’s him,” she whispered. “The guy from the movie theatre!” By then, Albert had heard a version of the story, though not quite the true one; nearly all her friends had. Albert stepped in front of her, shielding her from Robert’s view, as they rushed back to the table where their friends were. When Margot announced that Robert was there, everyone erupted in astonishment, and then they surrounded her and hustled her out of the bar as if she were the President and they were the Secret Service. It was all so over-the-top that she wondered if she was acting like a mean girl, but, at the same time, she truly did feel sick and scared.

>Curled up on her bed with Tamara that night, the glow of the phone like a campfire illuminating their faces, Margot read the messages as they arrived:

“Hi Margot, I saw you out at the bar tonight. I know you said not to text you but I just wanted to say you looked really pretty. I hope you’re doing well!”

>“I know I shouldnt say this but I really miss you”

>“Hey maybe I don’t have the right to ask but I just wish youd tell me what it is I did wrog”

>“*wrong”

>“I felt like we had a real connection did you not feel that way or . . .”

>“Maybe I was too old for u or maybe you liked someone else”

>“Is that guy you were with tonight your boyfriend”

>“???”

>“Or is he just some guy you are fucking”

>“Sorry”

>“When u laguehd when I asked if you were a virgin was it because youd fucked so many guys”

>“Are you fucking that guy right now”

>“Are you”

>“Are you”

>“Are you”

>“Answer me”

>“Whore.”
I'm struck by how well she captures broken men in not only this story but others she's written. Her characters are laden with the wreckages of modern life, most of it barely mitigated, whether traumas or conditions, her characters shamble, and their lives seem horrible but they're no different than ours.

[Anonymous No.14084661]

>>14084579
I selected "valiant" because Kristen conveys not only the emotional turmoil in each node of the relationship but there's some other intrepid drive, some other energy that pushes through things, even observed facts, that drives the speech and motor systems into social connections. Margot is disgusted but still has sex. Margot has little reason to date this guy and persists through no small amount of cringe-tude. Why? Did God tell her to? Is she just a slut? One must supply some other explanation for why people do what they do, why we put our emotions in a box and venture outside their alarm bells and reflexivity? I find in her stories most of the characters are "unlikeable" if you want to judge them and moralize, but I think most people are broken and unlikeable. And we're still fucking, no? Why is that? Is genital friction driving everything? Some would say that. I'd say there's something spiritual that pushes us to take these little risks, at least if we're fortunate.

[Anonymous No.14084736]

>>14084661
i hope you understand making jokes about cats is not valiantly trying to connect. is a total masquerade.
you are idealizing the connections of people with people. you can say margot looks whatever she want to look in whatever dude, including some savage and spiritual subconscious connection to get out of herself, if you want. i dont care. i just wanna say that kind of flirting conversations are the kind of conversation that are the contrary of something noble or valiant or just clear.

yes, im a human and i need to be love, just like everybody else does. i dont fucking care.

[Anonymous No.14084761]

>/lit/
holy fuck this is a shit thread

[Anonymous No.14084945]

>>14084736
Gentle Anon, when people meet, especially man and woman, there can be a great deal at stake and so there's a big song and dance about even the smallest things. It's rarely the subject, "cats," that's important but rather the conversation, the timeliness of it, the time of day at which it's occurring, the word choice and asides that occur in the midst of the cat conversations, the patterns of interlocution, deferences, objections, etcetera. We are not told everything about the cat conversation either. It's reasonable to think there's interstitial material that ties them together, for instance the willingness to be open to talking about cats, distinct from the twenty-something males of Margot's previous six encounters. But still, all this is just setup and means little, which I think is part of your point. Mine is that we can all always not show up. We can always scuttle and skip out and make our egress and burn a bridge. These are actually easy things to do, always the easier, especially if you're as sullen as Roupenian's dark characters. It is much more challenging to build connections, maintain relationships, steward your social self, restrain yourself, cede, compromise, intuit and anticipate. Margot and the Red Vines guy decide to take the risk and take the step outside of their molded selves and connect, there being really no occasion or ritual to them doing so as in the case of for example Margot's high school and dorm life conditioning or Red Vines guy's conditioning to depressive dry spells at bars and being otherwise friendless. Why is it a challenge to see what each character did, at least in the beginning, as being perhaps their most admirable, truthful and courageous acts in the story? They mess it up, but they try. Many things are always shambling and imperfect, Anon. They require a great upkeep or else it dies. Most people let the universe reclaim everything and everyone. The remainder never makes physical sense and that's what makes them courageous. For a moment they could have been anything.

[Anonymous No.14085217]

>>14084945
im sorry, i dont read the story so i dont know what are you talking about. with the paragraphs i read, sounds like a common relationship of people with the common tactics to not scare the other. i dont see the broken people openly and valiantly trying to connect with another. but like i said, i dont read the story to fully argue with you. my only point is that they arent emotionally brave people just because they feel atracted by each other or something. but i dont read the story so i dont know.

[Anonymous No.14085331]

>>14085217
>newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/cat-person/
Maybe the bar is low enough that not ghosting people as disposable sexual entertainments elevates, at least to me. There's a wasteland of social ruins such that any connectivity seems like coral coming back.

[Anonymous No.14086180]

>>14083572
WHAT THE FUCK
LITERAL WITCHCRAFT

[Anonymous No.14086204]

Hey wanna text, Anon?

[Anonymous No.14086216]

>>14082649
>>14082667
>>14083548
>>14082671
>>14083555
>>14083563
>>14083568
>>14083572
>>14083891
>>14084450
>>14084491
>>14086180
>>14085331
thas a woman ? ... i though it was fucKing jon ttron

[Anonymous No.14086248]

>27 replies, 9 posters
go away, all you have to show for yourself is one short story. begging for clout on 4chan isn't going to make people care

[Anonymous No.14086355]

CK: In your view, what’s important for new writers developing their practice?
KR: Having a curious approach to yourself and your writing and recognizing that it might take a really long time to find the circumstances that work for you as opposed to bullying yourself through it and trying to achieve it by pure willpower. Obviously some willpower is required, but for me it was setting aside that idea.

CK: There can be this false sense of how quickly you can produce a piece of writing …
KR: Or that you have any control over it. You rarely do! You have control over the circumstances. You can figure out what the best circumstances are for you to write. You can do everything you can to protect that time and that space. But I think that you have to recognize that it’s not something that is fully within your conscious control, and that loosening your grip a little bit, especially on outcome, is really important.

CK: Do you procrastinate?
KR: I think it’s even more true for women, though I’m sure men also wrestle with it — it’s very hard for me to be like, “No, I have to write.” It was a big, big thing for me when I would stop making appointments in the mornings. Before, if the dentist was like, “It’s more convenient for us for you to come at 9!” I’d be like – Oh, ok! Now, I make an effort not to throw my writing under the bus whenever someone needs anything from me.

[Anonymous No.14086371]

>>14086248
>Begging for clout
New Yorker published her more than once, fyi

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !mxvabIoSIE No.14086386]

>>14084761
>Thread about a book
>Go away! my lit! Reeeee

Seems better than Tao Lin.

>>14084579
I see what you’re saying. Valid point.

[Anonymous No.14086396]

>>14086386
>Seems better than Tao Lin.
Is there a limit to your lust you wretched old hag?
How dare you.
Go read the Bible immediately you silly broad

[Anonymous No.14086438]

>>14086248
And two of those are the trip, masked and anonymous. In any case, I'm rather taken by Kristen's abilities and will be posting about her throughout November.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !mxvabIoSIE No.14086441]

>>14086396
Hey Tao

[Anonymous No.14086466]

>>14086441
Perverted old fool

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !mxvabIoSIE No.14086478]

Why perverted?

[Anonymous No.14086532]

>>14086438
YOU WILL NEVER BE DOWN WITH US

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !mxvabIoSIE No.14086553]

>>14086438
I never post anonymously. THAT is the mask to me. Guy Fawkes mask that is.

[Anonymous No.14086585]

>>14082649
Unironically would but only if she talks about not wanting immigrants to enter the gene pool during sex.

[Anonymous No.14086596]

>>14086478
4

[Anonymous No.14086642]

>From the author's CV:
I graduated from Barnard College in May of 2003. A few weeks later, I left for Kenya with the Peace Corps, where I spent two years teaching Public Health and HIV education at a small orphans' center a few hours from the Ugandan border. During that time, I began learning Swahili and first encountered the literary magazine that later became the focus of my dissertation. Once I returned home, I worked as a teacher's aide, a cashier at a bookstore, a freelance reporter, a nanny, and a research coordinator at Mass General Hospital before enrolling in the PhD program in English at Harvard in the fall of 2007.

My primary field of study is postcolonial and transnational literatures, with an emphasis on contemporary African fiction. My dissertation, "Dodging the Language Question: English, Politics, and the Life of a Kenyan Literary Magazine," investigates the artistic and linguistic strategies employed by the literary magazine Kwani? during a period of intense social and political upheaval. Since I've been at Harvard, I've been lucky enough not only to be able to return to Nairobi to continue my research, but to invite the editor of Kwani? to campus to speak before an enthusiastic gathering of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. Last summer, I also received a grant to travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where I volunteered at the Salaam Kivu International Film Festival and met a wide range of talented artists from from all over eastern and central Africa. One of the most rewarding opportunities I've had during my time here has been working as a research assistant for Caroline Elkins when she served as an expert witness on behalf of Mau Mau veterans who are suing the British government because of atrocities committed during the colonial period. You can read more about that fascinating subject here and here.

My teaching philosophy, which emphasizes clarity, cultural sensitivity, and ethical engagement, stems directly from my time as an educator with the Peace Corps. In addition to my two junior tutorials for English majors ("How to Write About Africa" and "The New Global Novel") I've worked as a TF in a variety of departments and programs at Harvard, including English, African and African American Studies, and Gen Ed. I am currently a tutor in History and Literature, advising junior and senior theses in the postcolonial field. I also teach in the wider Boston community in my role as a Community Awareness and Prevention volunteer with the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center.

If you are interested in talking to me about my research, teaching, or other experience, please feel free to be in touch! I look forward to hearing from you.

[Anonymous No.14086780]

From her short story collection 'You Know You Want This," you have the first story 'Bad Boy,' an entirely different animal than 'Cat Person,' being instead sinister and menacing in an incredibly devilish way. But then there's this pic related story, which I also really enjoy for the descriptions of emotional peaks and drops, and it's first sentence is highly memorable, but also completely ridiculous. 'Bad Boy' and 'Cat Person' both establish a kind of observational precision and an emotional granularity on the part of the author. She seems to have either BTDT or have talkative friends who've endured the same and taken great notes by either. So I'm kind of gobsmacked reckoning Kristen knew someone to base this upon. My initial reaction was she was absurdly misaligned with how men think, but there's many types out there. Can I really discount that there's not some jaded weirdo who thinks about his dick as a knife?

[Anonymous No.14086793]

>>14086780
>“Bad Boy” is a good primer for the stories that follow: Roupenian is principally interested in taking the gendered power dynamics that pervade our everyday lives to unfamiliar extremes, drawing out the depravity of human relationships in the hopes of making us shift uncomfortably in our chairs. “I have always been perplexed by and obsessed with not only questions of powerlessness, but feeling like you have too much power,” Roupenian told Elle last month. “I’ve always had a hard time finding a middle ground.”

I swear I read "Bad Boy" somewhere, but I cannot find a link to it.

[Anonymous No.14086868]

>>14086793
>https://medium.com/s/story/the-good-guy-a-story-from-the-author-of-cat-person-59e5bfe9322f

>Growing up, Ted was the kind of small, bookish boy female teachers described as “sweet.” And he was sweet, at least where women were concerned. He spent his childhood and early adolescence floating through a series of crushes on older, unattainable girls: a cousin, a babysitter, his big sister’s best friend. These crushes were always sparked by some small gift of attention — a minor compliment, genuine laughter at one of his jokes, remembering his name — and they contained no overt or sublimated aggression at all. Just the opposite: In retrospect, they were remarkably chaste. In a recurring daydream he had about his cousin, for example, he envisioned himself as her husband, puttering around the kitchen as he prepared breakfast. Dressed in an apron, he hummed to himself as he squeezed fresh orange juice into a pitcher, whisked the pancake batter, fried the eggs, and placed a single daisy in a small white vase. He carried the tray upstairs to the bedroom and sat down on the side of the bed, where his cousin was snoozing beneath a hand-stitched quilt. “Rise and shine!” he said. His cousin’s eyes fluttered open. She smiled sleepily at him, and as she sat up, the quilt slid down, revealing her bare breasts.
>That was it! That was the entire fantasy. And yet he nursed it so long, and with such devoted attention (Should the pancakes have chocolate chips in them? What color should the quilt be? Where should he put the tray so that it would not fall off the bed?), that it imbued his aunt and uncle’s house with a sexual aura that remained palpable to him even as an adult, even though his cousin had long ago become a lesbian and immigrated to the Netherlands and he hadn’t seen her in years.
I love how this humanizes an otherwise loathsome character, and forces this idea that were all pretty loony, that to be human is maybe to be going from fit to craze and so on.

[Anonymous No.14087300]

>Indeed, the collection’s first story, “Bad Boy,” announces its distance with aplomb. In a grim first-person plural, a deviant couple recounts how their bum-of-a-friend starts crashing on their couch after a bad breakup. Realizing he can overhear their nightly escapades, the couple starts fantasizing, then teasing, then after a deluge of alcohol, goading him to watch. “Friend” soon becomes a euphemism for sex-slave, as the narratorial “we” imposes elaborate rules and punishments, then loses “our fucking shit” (and sex-drive) when he flees. Finding him back with the girlfriend, they ruthlessly collect themselves and order she be stopped. Read: Strangled. Clearly, we’ve left the psychological realism of “Cat Person” far behind, as well as its well-bounded, hashtag-able ethics of consent. We’ve entered a murkier realm of libertinism and pseudo-horror, one where the eponymous “Bad Boy” comes off as both predator and prey. Sex remains Roupenian’s preferred site to explore human villainy, but the evil has grown more Manichaean — and it’s distributed across gender lines.
>Manichaean
Rather than receiving this spiritually, I saw how libido and emotional vulnerability, even vacuity and no small amount of alcohol combine to virtually erase a person and make the husk quite malleable, so long as you keep stringing along those inclinations. So long as the flavor is right, the carrot can be quite diluted and miserly titrated. It's nearly like Kristen stumbles into MKUltra type mind erasure, leaving the reader to stitch up a deus ex machina to how the murderous ideation came to be, although it doesn't sound too alien to the themes of psychological predators and prey. The murderer does enter into a kind of radicalization via sex slavery and given the capers owed to such people, I don't think one requires demons, only human frailty.

[Anonymous No.14087435]

[Anonymous No.14087451]

Kristen taught a class at Harvard called, "The New Global Novel,"
>https://scholar.harvard.edu/kroupenian/classes/new-global-novel
Here's it's primary readings:
>Open City, Teju Cole (2011)
>The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy (1997)
>Elizabeth Costello, JM Coetzee (2003)
>NW, Zadie Smith (2012)
>What is the What, Dave Eggers (2006)
>Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)

[Anonymous No.14087499]

>>14082667
She's got some comely tootsies on her ig, cute bell like toes and skin as white as a Negev dairy trough

[Anonymous No.14088654]

Bump

[Anonymous No.14089263]

>>14082649
>Ywn cultivate your carnal knowledge of Barnard College peers in a steady rotation of lappings, grindings, smearings and gushings, exchanging partners during bathing curricula, neck straining swaps in the library stacks, lips mashed against pudenda, trombonings, snuffling, ensuring that at almost all hours on campus, an ear tuned to the shadows, the out of sight alcove or corner will hear the slurping, gnashing, gulps, burps, braps and gasps of women lost to service of the Sapphic ideal

[Anonymous No.14089670]

The LARB described "Bad Boy" as Sadean, which I think puts it quite perfectly. You're so utterly immersed in the lurid depths of too people way more far gone and lost to evil than any reader would readily imagine. And you do not grasp that depth until the very end, when you realize this snickering mischief was precisely the impish form described elsewhere, just manifested in the hypersexual modern modes of threesomes, S&M play, taking to an ultimate conclusion "Domination" scenarios such that a submissive is not limited to being a fucktoy and is remade further into a murderer, one whose perhaps even raping his victim through her last moments.

[Anonymous No.14090106]

The kink fluency in this collection of short stories suggests the author knows how to have a good, if elaborate time.