From the Archive: “Throwing Dirt on the Grave of Minimalism” — Roundtable Talk
By Alex Wexelman
Roughly a decade after it became the predominant style in the art world, Minimalism—a pared down writing style influenced by the likes of Ernest Hemingway—became a popular trend in literature
From the Archive: Bruce Jay Friedman’s Story, “Business is Business”
By Alex Wexelman
The short story, like many of Friedman’s, concerns a working-class Jewish family and the intra-family struggles for success and financial freedom in America.
From the Archive: R. Flowers Rivera’s “Exegesis: A World Gone Awry”
By Alex Wexelman
Rivera wrote on her official website, “Growing up, I was steeped in the oral tradition,” the inflection evident in her confident prosody.
From the Archive: Eavan Boland “On Religion and Poetry”
By Alex Wexelman
In 1982, Eavan Boland wrote an essay titled “On Religion and Poetry” for The Furrow, a monthly journal for the contemporary Church. Eleven years later, The Columbia Journal reprinted the tract in its No. 18/19 issue.
From the Archive: Interview with Stanley Kunitz
By Alex Wexelman
The first piece in the debut issue of Columbia Journal features three female poets quizzing the recently retired United States Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz. Kunitz, who lived to be 100, was a teacher, a poet, and a gardener of great repute.
Fiction Archives Spotlight: Tom Perrotta’s ‘The Wiener Man’
My mother was a den mother, but she wasn’t fanatical about it. Unlike Mrs. Kerner—the scoutmaster’s wife and leader of our rival den—she didn’t own an official uniform, nor did she attempt to educate us in the finer points of scouting, stuff like knot-tying, fire-building, and secret hand shakes. She considered herself a glorified babysitter and pretty much let us do as we pleased at our meetings, just as long as we amused ourselves and kept out of her hair.
