Michael LaPointe

Portfolio (2012-2024)

Links provided when available free and online.

2024

Summer books
(Times Literary Supplement, June 21, CONTRIBUTION)

Enter the labyrinth
(Times Literary Supplement, April 12, REVIEW)

Echoes of a past life
(Times Literary Supplement, April 5, REVIEW)

The Shade
(Dot Com, FICTION)

And so we bought a condo
(Times Literary Supplement, February 9, REVIEW)

Secret Sex: An Anthology
(Dundurn Press, FICTION)

2023

Eating invisible halwa
(Times Literary Supplement, December 22 / 29, REVIEW)

Books of the year
(Times Literary Supplement, November 17, CONTRIBUTION)

Missing in action
(Times Literary Supplement, November 3, REVIEW)

Purity of the desert
(Times Literary Supplement, July 14, REVIEW)

Summer books
(Times Literary Supplement, June 23, CONTRIBUTION)

Other side of paradise
(Times Literary Supplement, April 21, REVIEW)

'Damsels' and 'fellows'
(Times Literary Supplement, January 13, REVIEW)

2022

Books of the Year
(Times Literary Supplement, November 18, CONTRIBUTION)

The Brilliance of Colette, a Novelist Who Prized the Body over the Mind
(The New Yorker, ESSAY)

Operation Morning Light
(Imperative/Vespucci, PODCAST SERIES)

A Study in Blue and Green
(Weird Era, FICTION)

So much blood
(Times Literary Supplement, September 16, REVIEW)

The young are all elsewhere
(Times Literary Supplement, August 5, REVIEW)

Summer books
(Times Literary Supplement, June 24, CONTRIBUTION)

Hoop memes
(Times Literary Supplement, June 3, REVIEW)

Burning cop cars
(Times Literary Supplement, May 13, REVIEW)

Werner Herzog Has Never Liked Introspection
(The New Yorker, INTERVIEW)

Nothing seems solid
(Times Literary Supplement, April 1, REVIEW)

The Other Guy
(Taddle Creek, FICTION)

The sea, the sea
(Times Literary Supplement, March 25, REVIEW)

Electric Prisoner
(Paperless, PODCAST)

2021

System failures
(Times Literary Supplement, November 26, REVIEW)

Theme park of awfulness
(Times Literary Supplement, November 12, REVIEW)

Private Hands
(The Walrus, FICTION)
Nominated for the National Magazine Awards

Summer Books
(Times Literary Supplement, CONTRIBUTION)

Land of the rising shadows
(Times Literary Supplement, June 18, REVIEW)

The Novel that Elizabeth Spencer Wanted to Be Remembered For
(The New Yorker, ESSAY)

The Creep
(Taddle Creek, EXCERPT)

New World Europeans
(Times Literary Supplement, April 30, REVIEW)

From the oak to the God's Eye
(Times Literary Supplement, April 23, REVIEW)

Attitude intact
(Times Literary Supplement, April 2, REVIEW)

2020

No more pretence
(Times Literary Supplement, December 18/25, REVIEW)

Out of touch and famous
(Times Literary Supplement, October 2, REVIEW)

Behind closed doors
(Times Literary Supplement, August 21, REVIEW)

Unlucky Numbers
(The Paris Review, "Dice Roll" COLUMN)

Summer books
(Times Literary Supplement, June 26, CONTRIBUTION)

All the time in the world
(Times Literary Supplement, May 22, REVIEW)

The Fascinating Origins of Greyhound Racing
(The Paris Review, "Dice Roll" COLUMN)

The Black Gambling King of Chicago
(The Paris Review, "Dice Roll" COLUMN)

Ridiculous, unless lit up
(Times Literary Supplement, April 3, REVIEW)

The Pioneer of Online Gambling
(The Paris Review, "Dice Roll" COLUMN)

The Edison of the Slot Machines
(The Paris Review, "Dice Roll" COLUMN)

2019

Friends we haven't met
(Times Literary Supplement, November 12, REVIEW)

The Blue School
(The Halloween Review, FICTION)

Room for me and a mountain lion
(Times Literary Supplement, August 6, REVIEW)

The Unbearable Smugness of Walking
(The Atlantic, ESSAY)
Collected in Best Canadian Essays 2020

Seeking the Elixir of Life Through High School Science Class
(The New York Times, REVIEW)

A Gambit for Civil Rights
(The Paris Review, "Dice Roll" COLUMN)

Gambling on the High Seas
(The Paris Review, "Dice Roll" COLUMN)

Interview: Death of the Critic?
(Times Literary Supplement Podcast, INTERVIEW)

Death of the Critic?
(Times Literary Supplement, ESSAY)

Madame Mustache
(The Paris Review, "Dice Roll" COLUMN)

The Phantom Gambler
(The Paris Review, "Dice Roll" COLUMN)

The Racy Jazz-Age Bestseller You've Never Heard Of
(The Paris Review, ESSAY)

Cesario in the Hindu Kush
(Times Literary Supplement, January 29, REVIEW)

2018

Survival; mechanism
(Times Literary Supplement, October 16, REVIEW)

An Interview with Javier Marias
(The Paris Review, INTERVIEW)

The Stunt
(Hazlitt, FICTION)
Collected in After Realism: 24 Stories for the 21st Century
Nominated for the Digital Publishing Awards

Conceal and reveal
(Times Literary Supplement, September 5, REVIEW)

This rap history is whack
(Times Literary Supplement, August 15, REVIEW)

Nico: Beyond the Icon
(The Paris Review, ESSAY)

Yesterday's Genius
(Brick, ESSAY)

Diminished returns
(Times Literary Supplement, June 26, REVIEW)

Interview: Chasing the Pearl of Lao Tzu
(RadioWest, INTERVIEW)

Chasing the Pearl of Lao Tzu
(The Atlantic, FEATURE)

Sodom and the Torah
(Times Literary Supplement, May 2, REVIEW)

Candidate
(The Walrus, FICTION)
Collected in Best Canadian Stories 2018
Nominated for the 2019 Journey Prize

Sociable as a cloud
(Times Literary Supplement, March 13, REVIEW)

A Novel of the AIDS Pandemic That Shouldn't Be Forgotten
(The New Yorker, ESSAY)

2017

Books of the year
(Times Literary Supplement, CONTRIBUTION)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Convict
(The Atlantic, ESSAY)

Few lived well
(Times Literary Supplement, July 26, ESSAY)

Summer books
(Times Literary Supplement, CONTRIBUTION)

A right to blackness
(Times Literary Supplement, March 29, REVIEW)

Rhyme-sayer, stone-cold player
(Times Literary Supplement, March 1, REVIEW)

Age of Anger
(The Globe and Mail, REVIEW)

After the Resolution
(Times Literary Supplement, February 1, ESSAY)

The Fall Guy
(Times Literary Supplement, January 20, REVIEW)

2016

When Did Literary Feuds Become So Boring?
(The Walrus, ESSAY)

My Wife's Novel
(Litro, FICTION)

The Pleasures of Incomprehensibility
(The Paris Review, ESSAY)

Great Writers, Terrible Parents
(The Walrus, ESSAY)

World republic of letters
(Times Literary Supplement, November 30, ESSAY)

Send in the Swans
(Hazlitt, ESSAY)

Who Is the Me?
(Los Angeles Review of Books, ESSAY)

Books of the Year
(Times Literary Supplement, CONTRIBUTION)

The Meaning of the Bones
(The Paris Review, ESSAY)

Do Writers Deserve to Make a Living?
(The Walrus, ESSAY)

How to Write a Bestseller
(The Walrus, ESSAY)

Bernhard refracted
(Times Literary Supplement, September 14, REVIEW)

Harry Potter Lives On
(The Walrus, ESSAY)

To Burn a Book
(The Walrus, ESSAY)

Summer Books
(Times Literary Supplement, CONTRIBUTION)

Future families
(Times Literary Supplement, May 11, REVIEW)

Marie Grubbe
(Times Literary Supplement, May 11, REVIEW)

Rigged sports
(Times Literary Supplement, ESSAY)

Chernobyl's Literary Legacy
(The Atlantic, ESSAY)

Eluding discourse
(Times Literary Supplement, March 2, REVIEW)

One-Trick Tiger
(The Walrus, ESSAY)
Nominated for the National Magazine Awards

The Armageddon of New China
(Los Angeles Review of Books, ESSAY)

The Right Information
(Times Literary Supplement, ESSAY)

2015

Vladimir Sorokin and the Russian Novel's Identity Crisis
(The Atlantic, ESSAY)

Music for tourists
(Times Literary Supplement, November 18, REVIEW)

In Search of the Thing-itself
(Tikkun, ESSAY)

What's Your Process?
(July 15, INTERVIEW)

The Anatomy of Bloom
(Times Literary Supplement, July 8, REVIEW)

Composed of money
(Times Literary Supplement, June 19, ESSAY)

Books for summer
(Times Literary Supplement, June 12, CONTRIBUTION)

Impartial Record of the Break-up
(Vol. 1 Brooklyn, FICTION)

Oblivious to the world
(Times Literary Supplement, April 29, REVIEW)

Paranoia, the Realistic Response
(Los Angeles Review of Books, ESSAY)

Choose Your Own Ending
(The Walrus, ESSAY)

Oversharing
(Times Literary Supplement, February 18, REVIEW)

Poses, with Painting
(Highway, FICTION)

Political plotting
(Times Literary Supplement, January 28, ESSAY)

2014

Flight Simulator
(Prism International, FICTION)

Autopsy of an Inscription, 2/9/88
(Dot Com, ESSAY)

Thirteen Sittings
(Times Literary Supplement, November 19, REVIEW)

Pure heartache
(Times Literary Supplement, September 24, REVIEW)

For Love or Money
(Maisonneuve, ESSAY)

In Our Nature
(The Walrus, ESSAY)

On all fours
(Times Literary Supplement, May 28, REVIEW)

Inevitabilities
(Times Literary Supplement, April 23, REVIEW)

The Book Gets Fatter
(Los Angeles Review of Books, ESSAY)

Belomor
(Times Literary Supplement, January 16, REVIEW)

2013

Stub
(Event, FICTION)

Second Acts
(Los Angeles Review of Books, ESSAY)

A dogged quest
(Times Literary Supplement, November 22, REVIEW)

Essential, Elemental Alice
(The Tyee, ESSAY)

Avenging arthropods
(Times Literary Supplement, September 20, REVIEW)

Death Becomes Her
(Los Angeles Review of Books, ESSAY)

Burning lights
(Times Literary Supplement, May 17, REVIEW)

A Generous Book with an Unfriendly Face
(Arc Poetry, REVIEW)

King of the Granola Heads
(Times Literary Supplement, ESSAY)

What's Happened to CanLit?
(The Literary Review of Canada, ESSAY)

Waiting for the Barbarians
(Times Literary Supplement, January 25, REVIEW)

2012

Tom Wolfe's latest? Toss it on the bonfire!
(The Globe & Mail, REVIEW)

When life gets hard
(Times Literary Supplement, November 23, REVIEW)

Vote cool
(Times Literary Supplement, November 9, REVIEW)

In his memoir, Paul Auster not only confesses, he judges himself
(The Globe & Mail, REVIEW)

Speak of the devil
(The Globe & Mail, REVIEW)

Laurels enough: The 2012 Griffin Prize Anthology
(Arc Poetry, REVIEW)

Cosmopolis: A film by David Cronenberg
(The Tyee, REVIEW)

The nation that disappeared
(The Globe & Mail, REVIEW)

Hungarian epic is one of a kind
(The Globe & Mail, REVIEW)