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Gideon Leek

BOOKS

Portnoy’s Undercard: Lucas Schaefer’s ‘The Slip’

Offensive? Impossible? Absurd? All boxes are checked in this rollicking novel that can’t keep its hands to itself.

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BOOKS

‘The Seers’ Attempts to Blend Postcolonial Lit With Porn and the Hope for Asylum

The protagonist’s mania for kinky sex gets in the way of a refugee story — and doesn’t even titillate.

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BOOKS

Discovering Devin Jacobsen, and America, Through a New Short Story Collection

In “The Summer We Ate Off the China,” a former slave meets an old overseer,  tourists try to parse the Dali Museum, and MeToo and HR take the stage.

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FILM

Since 1967, Frederick Wiseman Has Pointed His Camera at the Institutions that Shape Our Lives

A month-long survey at Film at Lincoln Center is screening dozens of the 95-year-old’s films, running the gamut of modern life. 

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BOOKS

E. L. Doctorow’s ‘Ragtime’ at 50: Forget the Musical and Give the Book Another Listen

The compelling novel captures America as the exploitations of the Gilded Age crashed into the anger of the early-20th-century’s dispossessed. 

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BOOKS

Still Alice: Blake Butler’s Knotty Novel Is Back, Retitled

“Void Corporation” is new, it’s old, it’s still a trip.

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Review of the book BITTER WATER OPERA

BOOKS

In Nicolette Polek’s ‘Bitter Water Opera,’ Finding Yourself Is a Spectral Affair

An ancient curse, an eccentric opera house, and a ghost bring some self-actualization.

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Image of a poorly written threat on a cell phone the Village Voice review of Nathaniel Stein's novel, "The Threat"

BOOKS

No Laughing Matter: Nathaniel Stein’s ‘The Threat’

Poorly written death threats give meaning to an empty life in this comically absurd novel.

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Village Voice review of Joyce Carol Oates' new book, "Zero-Sum."

BOOKS

Infinite Joyce: Prolific Oates Takes On Dead Wallace

Joyce Carol Oates continues to move up literature’s ladder, looking down upon some of those who didn’t have her stamina. 

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Village Voice article about the 100th anniversary of the HOLLYWOODLAND (now just HOLLYWOOD) sign in Los Angeles.

CULTURE

Hollywoodland: The Real Estate of Dreams

The sign went up in Hollywood a century ago, and they’ve been recycling the plots ever since. 

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