The Promise of Video Games
Listening to music I love with someone who doesn’t is a painful experience. It often ends with me turning off the music, sheepishly apologizing for sounds that only the day before inspired raptures of emotion, babblings
Takes
Response to “Martha Ruth Marcy May Bekorah Marlene”
This year a man who has carried on multiple affairs, divorced two wives, and requested one open marriage was endorsed to run for president by a southern state where all the “family values” stuff, the so-called “social
Responses Takes
Response to “A Story Girl”
To ask how we read is to enter a heavily contested warzone. If you dare to peer through the heavy smoke thrown up by all the busted ordnances, you can make out a bunch of half-animate bodies. Few have been… Continue Reading
Responses Takes
Response to “Avenida Paulista”
The archive is a ziggurat, always growing upwards, always closer to heaven. On top will sit the glassy-eyed medium through which the totality speaks, liberated from personality. It is erected everywhere, and every place becomes no place beneath its shadow…. Continue Reading
Responses Takes
Response to “The Knot”
Who is François Mauriac? Google knows: French novelist of the last century’s first half, long-beaked Nobel laureate in a taupe bowler hat. So does Wikipedia, one click away: leftist firebrand, Catholic penitent, biographer
Responses Takes
Response to “The Quest For Fantasy’s Power”
For a generation that prides itself on self-awareness and being hip to the complexity of cultural referents, we allow blind spots for the most intimate topics. Despite the ubiquitous personal technology, who has
Responses Takes
Response to “Transmission Man”
I woke up the other morning with a girl’s face clouding my vision. Thoughts of her saturated my first waking moments. With every bite of cereal, her presence made itself known to my still hazy consciousness. She is
Responses Takes
Response to “In Search of Symbols”
Teach for America gets criticized sometimes for its inability to create “true” teachers. Its critics claim that TFA churns out graduates interested solely in adorning their experience with a small helping of “reality” before heading to the “real world” of… Continue Reading
Responses Takes
Response to “A Better Question”
There’s a photograph of me sitting in the middle of a field, squinting up at the open sky, an expression of patient interest on my face. I’m about 3 years old. When I look at that photograph now, I like… Continue Reading
Responses Takes
Dear Reader
Let’s talk. When we say that The Bad Version is all about conversation, you might ask: What does that actually mean? Well, first and foremost, we’re talking about an open-minded approach to critical and creative writing that begins a discussion,… Continue Reading
Takes
Response to “Don’t Pay Any Attention to This”
Nearly everything written about David Foster Wallace makes me not want to read him. I don’t know if this is a common thing, though I certainly have plenty of friends who’ve been turned off of the guy.Perhapsit’s